Had a crappy weekend.  Nick and I were battling each other (now back to peaceful smoochiness) which ultimately resulted in a hazelnut coffee covered iBook keyboard (Nick’s).  Alas, there was no repairing the drowned bugger, so this morning I ordered a replacement.

Runs since my last post were Thurs: 9, Fri: 9 progression, Sat: 8, Sun: 12 and today another 9.   Saturday’s 8 was happily punctuated by running into my speedy friend Joe, so we ran a little ways together while catching up on life.

Yesterday’s run sucked big ones.  I was in a sour mood which totally defied the beautiful weather gracing Philly.  I had my new little water bottle (juuuuust right) and even took a gel which I’ve not bothered to bring on a run in months.

I left quite late and the sun was already going down by the time I got to mile 6.  That, coupled with my bad attitude made whittling the 13 to 12 an easy decision.  Despite my stellar hydration and nutrition, about 3 miles from home, I ran out of steam, eventually stopping cold for a couple minutes for no real reason except to embrace feeling like shit, until I regrouped and restarted.

I’ve had so few crappy runs in all this time, that I was ok with the idea of this one sucking.  And even with the pause, I was able to pick it back up as I neared home, so it sucked but not hugely (8:42 avg).

Today is another day, Nick and I are back to lovey dovey “I’ll buy the keyboard” “No, I’ll buy the keyboard” with mucho kisses and apologies to spare.   The weather is amazing, 53 beautiful degrees, so I pulled out shorts and shortsleeves for the first time in forever and motored down the road.

Earlier this morning, Nick went on a bike ride.  He hasn’t been riding steadily thanks to the bad weather, so he called me mid-ride to say hi and that he was feeling out of shape.  I told him it was understandable he felt beat and that he shouldn’t feel the need to race himself (which he always likes to do)…advice I used a few hours later on my own outing.

Since I’ve been running faster across the board lately, I think I’ve become too pace-aware, loving those faster numbers I see.  Recovery runs are a rarity and even they aren’t that slow.  Yesterday’s draggy run told me I should back off today.

So I purposely didn’t look at my watch once, went by effort only.  It was healthy as can be.  I told myself if I end up in the 9:30s, that’s cool, it’s what my body wants, use your limbs and lungs to dictate the pace.

Irony of ironies, it turns out I ran my usual new easy pace anyway, avg. 8:33 with a couple 8:16s in there.  So much for good intentions, but it felt great and that’s what I was aiming for.  I’m going to do a few more watch ignoring runs this week to see how (if) they vary.

The rest of the week is up in the air as far as workouts.  I’m still pre-Half plan, but I need to do something fast this week, tempo or intervals, we’ll see as the days progress.  Snow is expected tonight and tomorrow so I might not get to it till the end of the week.  As always, count on me to keep you posted with the outcome. Later, my dears.

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