Another Rainy Day

I set a goal to do another "long" run today. Last night I put in a long gym session of 15min elliptical, 15 min row 10 min stair stepper, weights, abs, 10 min elliptical. So this isn't as long as I have done in the past, but I also haven't been to the gym in about 3 months. My butt was a bit sore from the lunges I did, but nothing unbearable. More of the feel good sore. The forecast the next week is rain, rain, and wind. Around 10am it wasn't raining, just overcast. I gussied myself up to go running. After all I had a new watch to test out. I filled my two bottles with 16 oz of Gatorade (I wanted to mix it up from the HEED). The weather was perfect for running. Overcast and cool. My knees felt fine and it was really cool to see my pace and my mile times. My goal for the Half marathon in a few weeks is to finish within 2 hours. I convinced myself that I would need to run an average of a 9 min/mile. So far I had guesstimated that on my long runs, I was pacing about 9 to 10 min/mile. I don't know if it was because I had on the Garmin or what but my pace overall was: 9 min exactly. Ha. Most of my miles were under 9 min but there were a few that kicked my butt. I also did drink all my Gatorade. I only finished one bottle (8oz).

I decided to take an ice bath after the run. I did it and it felt AMAZING. I only got into my thighs because I was scared and too impatient to wait for the tub to fill to my hips. Plus, my hips are rarely sore. It felt marvelous. Doing it again. Momma Bear was actually motivated to go "swimming" today so after my ice bath, I went to the pool with her. Unfortunately, lifeguard training was happening so we couldn't swim laps. We instead splashed around and kicked back and forth until the kiddos took over the rec swim space, forcing Momma Bear and I retreated to the hot tub. 15 minutes later, we headed to the showers.

I think the 2 minutes of semi-swimming really helped to loosen my legs. Next time I hope I can actually do some real swimming to loosen my arms from the weights yesterday.



Workout: Run 11.02 miles, 1:39:10 Pace: 9:00/mi

My splits were all over the page. I'm going to try to smooth things out over the next few weeks.