21 Miles and 3 Hour Drives

Well, after a long week last week I am planning a cutback week in mileage and workouts for this week. I might do a couple of a little bit harder workouts (we have a tempo/threshold run tomorrow with my training group and I think I might do some cruise intervals in a shorter workout on Thursday) but for the most part this will be a much lighter week. Last week I topped at 59 miles for the week. We had a 20 miler on Saturday that by the time we were done was 21 miles. The pace was slower than I would’ve liked (9:17 is what we averaged by the end) but I felt good the whole way, could’ve run further (5 more miles would’ve been easy and under 4 hours as we were picking up the pace at the end) and had sub 9, including an 8:15 or so mile in the last 4-5. There wasn’t anyone willing to run a faster pace up at the front it didn’t seem, but having more energy in the legs at the end I guess is a good thing.

Friday night I met up with my friend who is getting married in January, her sister and sister-in-law, the three of us make up the wedding party, and we went bridesmaid dress shopping. Her dress was picked and purchased a few weeks ago, and ours ended up being bought on Friday. It was basically the dress we had already been shown that was made to match up with one of her top two dresses. It wasn’t the dress she ended up getting, but this dress will still work fine and it’s a cute dress that I could see wearing again. We went for yummy dinner after at a good Italian place (I said I wanted pasta no one else cared and I was running 21 the next morning) and I tried lasagna even thinking it wasn’t a good idea day before a long run, but it was fine (have always avoided heavy cheese things but now I know it works!!). We went shoe shopping after, just to see if there was a chance we’d find something and amazingly we did…they were more than I’d maybe have wanted to spend, but the shoe was very cute and I’m fine with it because I’ll wear them again and often and they were comfy, at least to me!!

So after all the gallivanting went home and watched Phelps win gold number 7, then went to bed, did the run the next morning, then drove 3 hours to my parents. Not fun after 21 miles but oh well…what do you do? I visited at home, then went to my grandma’s for a visit, then to have a beer with mom and dad and saw my aunt and other grandma and some family friends…then went back and got other grandma to bring her down for dinner…we had yummy ribs, sweet corn and baked beans and some really good bread and then watched more Olympics and saw Phelps get 8 and saw marathon through Paula getting finished. Maybe it wasn’t a good run for her, but at least she was able to struggle through and finish. Went out for a while with my aunt later than night and then was home and spent the night with fuzzy nephew Beaux…got up the next morning and visited with mom and dad, went for a walk with mom and Beaux and we pooped him out, it’s been a while since tubby walked 2 miles! Then dinner and a nap and last visit with grandma, stocked up on sweet corn and came back up…was later than I normally come back but since I went down later figured I better stay a little longer. Got back in time though for a quick run to loosen up the legs and managed a nice 5 miler averaging 8:30s which isn’t bad considering the 21 the day before. Now I need weekend to recover from the weekend!!