Running Success Saturday!

This weekend, my scheduled "long run" was supposed to be 6 miles.

I wanted to go through the stages it took me to get to (and through) my run. I'm noticing a pattern:

Saturday morning:

My daughter usually wakes up when, or a few minutes after, I wake up. This makes it less-than-ideal for me to get up and do my run before the rest of the house is up, because she will most likely wake up my husband (and I want him to have at least one day to sleep in). Normally, I go running after he wakes up and has his coffee. This week, however, he had a ton of work to do, and I had a ton of housework, so he and I decided I would do it later in the afternoon. 

Oh no! I knew right then I would most likely come up with a million reasons why I shouldn't run.

We had planned to take the whole family to a friend's to have a family portrait taken. I knew this had the potential to be a bit tiring, but I just told myself I would keep planning my run no matter how it went. 

On the way home, both my husband and I were a little traumatized from the experience (but we did get a pretty good picture). I started whining: "My knees kind of hurt. My hip flexors feel funny. Maybe I should run tomorrow." My husband, bless him, told me to just do it. He said I would feel better afterwards (I'm so glad I married him).

We get home. I have a piece of Ezekiel toast and 2 hardboiled egg whites. I change into my running shoes. I see a million other things I need to be doing, but try not to get distracted.

I tell myself I'll just do 30 minutes.

Saturday Afternoon:

Oh no, it might get dark. I better not run very long.

Geez...

So, finally I get out the door. I say, "I'll be back in about an hour, or less, depending on whether or not it goes well." My husband says, "Have a good run."

I encounter a growling dog. I have a little bit of a fear of all dogs since the Great Dog Bite of 2011. This dog would NOT let me go, so I turn around and GROWL back at it. Finally, it loses interest.

I decided to do a run 4/walk 1 plan, where I run for 4 minutes then walk for 1 minute. I figure I can do that forever :-) 

I am not really sure how long it will take me to run 6 miles. I did the same plan last week for 60 minutes and ended up 5.18, so I figure I'll do somewhere around 70 minutes.

Well, I encountered several other dogs (I've got to get some pepper spray. That was a very expensive dog bite...) and made it to 60 minutes. I decided to do another 5 minute interval. Then, just so I could map easier, I decided to run all the way to the end of the street.

So, I go home, excited to see how far I've run, and it turns out to be 5.89 in 1:04:47). Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and count it as 6.

I enjoyed the run, I had a fun time, I felt TONS better about everything afterwards, and I still love running. I'm calling it a success.

Now I just need to decide if my "long" run next week should be 6 miles, or should I up it to 7? Sunday is my 37th birthday, so it would be nice to mark it with a significant milestone...

Question for the group:

- How long does my mileage need to be before I start taking an ice bath? I started to feel like I could benefit from it, but taking a bath on top of my hour away is a little iffy....

Everyone, have a great week! 

Sarah

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