you get out of it what you put into it

5 on the marathon course before a busy weekend. 

How does a 4-mile route end up being 3.65?  

Hills.  Dang, I hate those things.

I swam 400 meters again this weekend.  Last time I did it in 12:48 and was thrilled.  This time I did it in 11:13.  I can't imagine that I have improved that much.  I was trying to swim a bit harder, but I was still pleasantly surprised at the time.  I love a 1:35 improvement!

Also did about 4 miles on my bike - to the pool, back home for (more) drinks, back to the pool, and back home.

So, I practically did a tri... it was just all broken up.  And, the bike portion was a bit short and at an extremely leisurely pace.   

I hope y'all all had a wonderful 4th of July weekend.  I certainly did!  I am positive that I gained no less than 74 lbs from all the food I ate.

(currently observing my boss freak out about a mistake she made and snickering to myself...)

Trails; my slice of heaven. 

Legs were dead the whole time.  I assume from hills on Monday.

Planning a surprise party for another one of our running friends during the run.

Face planted about .25 into the run; knew it would be a good day after that!

Saw a ton of other folks out today:  runners, mountain bikers, and hikers.

Hit a mailbox on my way home because I was looking at a cute dog.  Argh.

I played 1.5 hours of volleyball at lunch today.  YAY!  That was a pretty good workout and my team totally won.

When I was making an awesome kill one time today I thought of Burt and this recent picture I got of him.  Burt likes to kick Mother Nature in the ovarian cyst when the weather is bad.  Sometimes it is because of the rain.  At other times, like now, it is because of the heat.  Please check out his rockin' bod though.  Burt is a p90x'ing fool these days and was clearly showing off his recent progress while taking his anger out on Mother Nature.  At least he didn't whip Thain Filkin on this particular day. 

On an unrelated note, I was out to dinner tonight with a friend that had bet $30 that Lebron would go to the Heat.  With all the people that got into the pool and dividing it by those that chose Miami, he ended up winning $125!!  Sweet!  We each ordered an extra beer in celebration.  Sasha, please don't kick me off the blog for talking about gambling and alcohol. 

On the marathon course.

Pitiful.

I ate lunch at 2:30.  A salad from Zaxby's, known as a "zalad."  I'm not sure if most of y'all have those.  Delicious!

Then off to the mountain to do trails.  I hoped to get in 7 miles and improve upon my horrible run from Saturday morning.

Less than 30 minutes wasn't enough time for my stomach to digest.  I run after eating a lot and normally don't have problems.  I'm thinking it was either the ranch dressing or the lettuce that did me in.  Plus the 100ish degree temps.  I threw up twice in the first mile.  BLAH.

Run/walk/hobble/crawl after that just to get back to my car.  I felt horrible.

Also saw a snake that kinda creeped me out because he was slithering.  Ick.

Got back to my car and saw a naked man in the parking lot.  Disgusting.  He was changing out of his hiking clothes.  Disgusting.

Terrible weekend for my running.  Hopefully this next week will go better.

Ran trails with my girlfriends today.  We went a bit quicker than normal (because we were running late) and I enjoyed it.  I pulled ahead of the group for probably the last .50 or so and ran around an 8:30 pace.  That was nice.  Now I just need to do that the whole loop + about 50 more miles.  HA!  A girl can dream :)

Then we went to the Huntsville Track Club meeting which was very interesting last night.  They had 3 local ultrarunning legends speak about some of their running experiences.  Between the 3 of them, I do believe they've done just about every major ultra in the country, and many around the world.  Rob and Kathy Youngren spoke about "Fire and Ice."  Kathy ran Badwater last year, "Fire" and she and Rob just ran the Antarctica Marathon in March, thus, "Ice."  Rob won the marathon and Kathy finished about 9 minutes behind him in second place.  She was the first female ever to go sub-4 in Antarctica.  Dink Taylor, the other speaker, is the owner of our local Fleet Feet store and an amazing runner.  He spoke about his experience of running the Strolling Jim 40 miler for 24 straight years, his first being at age 21.  Someone asked him why he got into ultra's and he replied, "I knew I was never going to be the winner of a big 10k race, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I could easily run a sub-8 pace for 50 miles.  That's easy."  Yea, me too, Dink.  Me too. 

I limited myself to a salad, 3 pieces of pizza, and 2 cookies for dinner.

Hope everyone has a good week!  Things are crazy here.

Trails.

Hot.

Fun.

Ran on the marathon course with my buddies at 6AM.  One girl, Lisa, and I broke away from the rest of the group and ran a little quicker pace.  It was nice.  I had hoped to run it all, but Lisa was having side stitches so we walked a few times.  No big deal.

Good weekend.  I am completely exhausted.

Sorry I've been a blog slacker lately.  Summer semester will be over soon.  Hopefully I'll be a little more on top of things after that.

Trails.

Temps cooled off a bit as it seemed like a storm was going to roll in.  Unfortunately, it never hit.  It would've felt so good.  I love running in the rain!  Pushed the pace a little more than normal on this run.  I enjoyed it.

Went swimming after my run.  Swimming is HARD!  I did 400m in 10:38 and somehow managed not to drown.  I'm trying to learn how to do a one and a half off the diving board.  I bet I flipped off that thing no less than 132,945 times last night and never got it.  Argh.  I was getting there until I landed flat on my face.  Then I was scared to fully rotate more after that because my head was throbbing so much.  Good times!  I'll get it one of these days...

Hope y'all have a great week!

Hill Route.

Parked at Randolph School early and ran .65 to my dad's house to fill my water bottle up with some nice, fresh, hot, hose water.  Yum!  Then I ran a different way back to the school to wait on my runner girls for a killer hill workout.  1.25 total at 8 min pace.

Then the 3.5 mile hill route started.  I was already dragging.  It was SOOOOOO hot yesterday.  Whew!  I do believe that is the hottest I've been on a run all summer.  I felt like I was dripping in sweat (I was), but when the run was over 2 of my friends commented that I wasn't sweating much.  I have such hydration issues.  I drank an entire water and gatorade when we got back to the car.  I carried my handheld with me (something I haven't been doing lately on runs shorter than 5 miles), but didn't drink from it at all.

The heat was brutal, so we walked the hills but ran everything else.  There are 4 major hills on the route.  My friend, Jen, and I took the lead and stayed there the entire time.  But, every time we got to a hill we would wait for our friends to catch up.  I wonder how much faster we would've finished if we hadn't waited on them.

I left a to-go sized portion of banana pudding in my car during the 2ish hours I was out with my friends (that includes going to my dad's and lots of socializing time).  It was around 100* outside, so I hate to think what the temp in my car was.  I didn't really want the banana pudding before the run, but decided after the run that is sounded tasty.  That probably wasn't the smartest thing!  I haven't gotten sick, but my stomach has felt queasy for several hours now.  Yippee!

On a girls weekend at the lake about an hour away from Huntsville.  I had to be in Huntsville by 9AM for some school stuff so I figured I would get up a little earlier and just meet my friends for our run.  I practically got no sleep.  Soooooo exhausted.  We ran 6 along the marathon course and the entire thing was a death march.

I am alive!  Barely!

Sunday night I started feeling really crappy and I got up and went to work on Monday.  When I arrived my co-worker told me I looked terrible.  Thanks!  I left work at noon because I felt terrible and went to my friend Laura's house to take a nap before we had a kickoff meeting for that 5k program we coach.  I felt more and more like crap.

Tuesday I felt like I had died.  I called in sick and actually went to the doctor.  If you know me, you know how rare this is.  I DO NOT go to the doc.  He did a strep test and told me I tested negative for it.  He thought I was in the beginning stages of it though and if I would come back tomorrow (Wednesday) I would probably test positive.  Since I was a negative, he couldn't give me a shot.  I had a "severe" throat and sinus infection.  He gave me some steroids and some nasty liquid cough medicine.

I went home took the medicine and slept the rest of the day.  I'm still dragging today (Wednesday), but can tell that I'm feeling somewhat better.

Who gets sick in the middle of the summer?  I am so upset.  Argh.  No running this week.  Hopefully I'll get in 6+ miles on Saturday.  

7 on the marathon course at 6AM with my friends.

My buddy Jonathan that I've talked about running with on here several times invited me to a 5k race this Saturday at 9AM.  His mom was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and they were charging a $5 entry fee (or more if you'd like) and donating the money to breast cancer research.  I'd say they had about 50 people participate which is great considering it was just a little race done at a friends house.  I did a run/walk combo and just had a good time visiting with some old friends.  The course was an out and back on a road that runs between 2 cotton fields.  This means no shade and rolling hills.  It was brutal!!