In My Head

There are a couple reasons to be pumped with this mornings run. First of all it was warm and not raining this morning like I was expecting. Second, Maddie and I ran a personal best time for our 7.5 miles this morning! We finished in 68 minutes and 29 seconds!! And that was with two bathroom stops (for her not me) and 12 street crossings. Now if I can just run the same pace for an additional 6 miles then I will be on track to run a super half marathon on Sunday!!

Recently someone asked me what I think about while I'm running. For the most part I spend my time doing calculations in my head (dork alert!). I can't help it. I am constantly trying to calculate my pace and how much I ran and how much more I have to run and how fast I have to run the rest of my run to finish in the time I am hoping.

Today my head sounded something like this while I was running this morning. "Wow its warm, I guess I didn't need so many layers. I feel good this morning so maybe I will try to kick up my pace a notch and see if I can keep it up for the whole run. Gosh its foggy. Hmmm what would I do if someone jumped out of the woods and tried to attack me right now?? Lets see are there any houses around? I think I would spray him with my pepper spray (you bet I run with pepper spray although usually I am more worried about coyotes than humans). Then I would run the nearest house and/or road. I can't be too far from civilization. I'm just on the bike path." (That went on for about a mile and a half). On to the next topic: "So I have run over 200 miles since January (say 210 for the sake of easy calculations in my head), if you average about 100 calories a mile then I have burned 20,000 calories in the past two months. If 3,500 calories are in a pound then I should have lost 6 pounds! (The calculating didn't happen that fast. It went more like well 3,500 and 3,500 is 7,000 that's 2 pounds and 7 times 3 is 21 so 2 times 3 is 6....6 pounds.) For the record I have not lost 6 pounds haha. Luckily I am running to help find a cure for cancer and not for weight loss!!

Tuesday Run

Yesterday I decided to do my long run because the weather forecast did not look promising. Its nice to get the longer of the two week day runs over with first too. So around 6:30AM Maddie and I took off for a nice 10 mile run. I was expecting pretty smooth sailing since it has been really quite warm (relative to what one would expect for February). Somehow though there was still quite a bit of snow and ice on the trail which was especially slippery because it was in the process of melting. Luckily for me, Maddie responds well to "whoa danger" which I yell to her every time I see snow or ice ahead so she doesn't run full steam and end up dragging me across the ice. Other than that nothing too exciting. I think my legs were still a bit tired from my long run on Saturday so it wasn't our best time ever but we are still under an average of 10 minute miles.

Also yesterday, I sent my letter out to Staples for copies to be made, got stamps and envelopes and made my address labels so tonight will be fundraising letter night. I'm hoping to get through my entire first round of mailings tonight. So everyone should be watching their mail!

DFMC 2010 (#8)

So a little late with my initial entry for this year's training.....I'll do a quick recap so that everyone is up to speed. This year I am living, working, and training on the Cape. I have myself a trusty training partner, Madison , the golden doodle. She does not let me slack off. Luckily (or unluckily) for me, she does not have a snooze button so when she hears my alarm go off she gets right in my face.

In January, I ran 12 training runs (3 a week)for a total distance of 106 miles. The runs spanned from 4 miles on January 4th to 16 miles on January 24th and my average pace was 9:39 per mile. The 16 miles was the Derry New Hampshire 16 miler, a race which had ridiculously steep hills around every corner. That went surprisingly well for me and inspired my to keep up the early morning runs. Most of my runs are on the bike path, as Madison is a much better runner when there are not cars driving by all the time.

In February so far I have run just shy of 98 miles so far with 8 runs. I usually do 3 runs a week but I missed on run for a storm. I am back on track now though. My longest run to date is 18 miles, which I did yesterday. A nice jog from my house in Harwich to my parents house in Eastham. It was a fabulous day for a run and I finished in 2 hours and 54 minutes.

This week I have two runs to do during the week and then a half marathon race on Sunday!!!