8ish miles

Quick update because surprise--I'm exhausted. Let me just say being a busy person with a busy baby can make a girl tired. I've been, literally, chasing Will all day. I think he is my cross-training.

Yesterday, we got together for our group run. It was nice to be together since we haven't gotten together for 2 weeks now. I miss seeing all the girls and Liz, even if she did seem a little cranky before we got going. ;) I'm pretty sure having hundreds (?) of women to deal with day in and day out gets pretty exhausting for her...

On my schedule was 7 miles but my Tues/Thursday running partner had 8 on her schedule. So I thought, there's no harm in going out 4 with her and then walking the last mile. I really didn't mind doing that and had every intention to do so.

The first 4 miles were fine..although we were in a icky pack at the beginning which I hate. I always run too fast when we do that. And I realized it was hot not long after we started. There was nice cloud coverage and we ran the greenway, so luckily the sun wasn't beating down on us but it was still humid.

Around 3.8 we GUed. I love GU. I told Susan stories and she told me some. It's really nice to have a whole hour + to chat with girlfriends. How often do most women and moms really spend time together just chatting? Probably not much and when running, what else is there to do? But talk about birthing babies, blogging, stupid ex-husbands of friends, pets, gatorade vs. water, the pretty scenery, etc. It's awesome.

Sorry, I lost my train of thought there..

Ok, so we turned around at 4 miles and head back the way we came. No problem but I did notice my breathing was a little hard so I knew we were going too fast. I tried to slow it down and then boom, boom, boom... hill, hill, hill. Ugh. The hills were long and a little tough on this run this time...definitely more difficult than they were last time we ran this same route.

At the next to last hill, I swear, my legs just STOPPED. It was the weirdest feeling. I was going and going and then, BAM! Nothing. So I walked up that hill and asked Garmin how far we'd been and my partner said "7.15". Whew. I knew I could just stop and walk the rest of the way if I wanted to. But, you know how this story ends.

I started to run.. walked.. ran..walked and then just ran. Ran to the finish. I was SO over the entire thing and just wanted to be done. And seeing my partner up in front of me made me keep going. I wanted to keep up with her!

So, all that to say I really don't know how far I ran. But I definitely ran/walked 8 miles. I would guess I ran a total of 7.75 miles total because I really didn't walk far when I did walk. It might be crazy that I've gone a mile over my schedule both of the past two weeks, but my schedule has been all messed up anyway. I did 3 to make up for the 8 the first week and this week, I totally didn't even run 1 minute on a scheduled day.. so it's not like I'm overacheiving or anything in terms of total miles.

I'm maybe stressing a little about my goal time for the race. I really need to think about it and decide how exactly I'm going to finish in my goal time. Because if I don't reach it, I might be disappointed. My ultimate goal is to finish it without walking but I really would like to finish in a time I have in my head... we'll see... guess I need to start listening to our coach about how to be a stronger runner, huh? :)