Enter two things:
1) Sick Car
2) Sick Husband
Last weekend while in Maryland, my car decided to start acting funny (acting funny meaning it hesitated twice when starting). Thinking there is something wrong with the battery, I scheduled a service appointment for as soon as I could get the car in. Turns out that was, of course, Saturday morning... which was scheduled to be full of 5 miles of tempo-pace running.
"No Problema!" I thought. I asked J if he would follow me to the car dealer, then go with me to the gym to work out while waiting for the diagnoses on the car. He agreed, and things looked fine.
Come Wednesday, enter Sick Husband. Poor guy has a terrible cold - he has gone through FOUR boxes of tissues this week alone! Obviously he's not in the mood to work out, so I had to move the tempo 5 to tonight which means I will most likely completely ditch the easy 2 this week.
Sorry, Training Schedule.
Those 2 little skipped miles won't really matter in the grand scheme of things, right? I mean, I have other things to do on Saturday like obtaining food for the super bowl, getting the husband's Valentine's Day present, and watching the George Mason Men's Basketball game at 5 pm. A girl's gotta have priorities, you know? And right now, homemade guacamole, making the husband happy, and watching my boys whip up on Old Dominion are higher priority than running that measly 2 miles.
The positive side of all this is that I got to do a 5 mile solo tempo run this evening. As much as I love having a running buddy, sometimes being by myself is nice. It rained yesterday, so things are finally a little bit cooler although it still does not feel like February should feel.
If Wednesday's outfit was "runner chic" then today's was "runner geek":
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| NOT fashionable. |
Shirt: Freebie Ocean City Half/5k Tech Shirt
Bottoms: Lululemon Groove Biker Short
I purchased this vest because I run in the dark a lot... around a lot of cars. Seeing as how I don't want to end up getting run over, I found a reflective running vest. It's not the most gorgeous thing, but it gets the job done. Plus it has lots of pockets, so I was able to stick my phone in one and take it along for the run.
Anyhow, for the first mile I was not feeling it. At all. I was cold, especially my arms. The weather has been so weird that I have forgotten how to dress for a chilly run. Not helping matters was the fact that I kept running into these:
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| DON'T WALK/RED LIGHTS City runners' worst enemy (other than cars) |
Having to stop every few blocks and wait at red lights while a seemingly heavier than usual traffic flow sped by was doing nothing for my motivation. But it also allowed for some photo taking.
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| JEB Stuart Monument |
I finally warmed up during mile 2 and also stopped hitting so many red lights. I was determined to have a good run because I had convinced Husband that we should have Chinese take out for dinner and therefore I had a lot of preemptive calorie burning to do.
The last three miles were a breeze. Once again, I switched up my return route, which really livened things up for me. Two spontaneous route switch ups in one week - I don't know what's come over me!
Overall, I think I kind of kicked butt.
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| You can really see how hitting those red lights affected my pace in Mile 1 |
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| Moving vs Elapsed time. Again, you can see how much those lights killed my time. But HECK YES, 8:46 average moving pace! |
Maybe that speed work is starting to pay off after all!
Here's one last photo - it's my favorite view/moment of my downtown Richmond runs, not only because it's beautiful, but also because it means I'm almost finished.
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| Approaching Sacred Heart Cathedral through VCU campus |
AND a special should out to my one and only official follower. How exciting! Thanks for following, R!
I quite like the vest. It looks cute on you. It's practical uses make it quite nice too. It looks warm too. Great for putting on after those cold winter races.
ReplyDeleteI also hate stopping at traffic lights, especially when I'm doing tempo runs. It completely kills the flow.