As promised, yesterday was almost as exciting as the day before.
First I fueled up with some tasty trail mix.
Then, I went to Costco and got my vacuum.
I will spare you the gross picture I sent to John of all the stuff I sucked out of the floor in the office, which is the floor I vacuum the most often and the room that the dog is rarely allowed in, yet still had so much dog hair!
Then I went running. I decided I would do a tempo run, but that was before I realized how terribly windy it was out. Things started off wonderfully. Then I turned around and was running uphill into a headwind. Not ideal conditions for running fast.
My warm-up was .6 miles, and the plan was to run three miles fast after that. But as you can see things started going downhill (or uphill depending on how you look at it) around mile 3. There was also a lot of dodging people with poorly behaved dogs at that point...
I'm especially amused at how erratic my pace became while I was running into the wind. It was gusting pretty good, and the snow has left behind copious amounts of dust so it was difficult to see at times. I'm sure Kiva and I are going to be blowing dirt out of our noses for weeks!
I'm relatively pleased with how this went, despite the horrible wind. I think 9:xx/mi are becoming my new 10:xx/mi. Even though the pace of my first mile is 10:46, after my warm-up I was running 9:30 - 9:50, which is way faster than I ever thought I could run two miles.
Also, I'm really not trying to become one of those people that agonizes over numbers (although it's probably hard to tell), but I feel like the numbers give me an idea of how I'm really doing. I get tired of running and feeling like I'm running super fast only to find out that I was running 12:00/mi.
Next week I'm going to find some freaking hills to run up. All this running on flats is giving me a big ego. And have I mentioned that I really really really miss running on dirt...and in the woods. There was a glimmer of hope when I couldn't see any snow on the trail that splits off of the bike path I usually run on...then my hopes were crushed as I ran down the trail a little further and it was a mucky, snowy mess. Argh! Hurry up and melt snow...I'm over you!
Here's a not-so-good photo of the hot dog and sweaty human...it was deceptively warm out. The wind was chilly but the sun was hot (and when I refer to hot, I do so in Alaskan standards, so 60+ degrees).
I certainly couldn't ask for a better running buddy (except when she chases leaves blowing in the wind, that's kind of annoying)!
