151.8 - A Few Good Miles

I did it--I got a run in at last. It had been almost a week again since my last run, and even though it was out of my routine and I had to put the kids in the gym's day care, it was totally worth it. Here's the way it went down:

I picked up the munchkins and dropped Luke off in the gym's day care, then got Sophie changed into her swim suit for swim class. She jumped in the pool and swam for a few minutes before her turn for class. She wants so badly to go in the deep end each week, but I won't let her unless there's another adult with her. She's only 6! It's 12 feet of water! No way am I comfortable having her out there by herself.

I watched her start class with the instructor in the deep end. Even with a trained swimming teacher out there, my heart was in my throat as I watched my daughter freestyle across the deep end twice. She was completely oblivious to the 12 feet of H2O and swam perfectly fine. She's still working on her stroke--it's not like she went across in a flash. But she did it and was happy as a clam.

So with her all set, I took off to change and grab a treadmill. I had less than 15 minutes, so I warmed up with a fast walk for 1 min. and then ran a 10 minute mile. That was tough. I haven't run that fast consistently for a long time. But I did it. I kept repeating the mantra from my old kickboxing class days*, "You can do anything for 60 seconds." That got me through the last 4 minutes.

I jumped off the treadmill after one mile and got back to Sophie just as her lesson ended. We got her showered and changed and hair dried, and instead of taking the kids home like I normally do, I dropped Sophie off in the day care so I could run some more.

My training plan for the Indy Half called for 35 minutes of running, so I aimed for 25 more minutes. I set my pace at 5.5 mph (10:54) and ran a mile, then took a water break walk for .6 miles, and picked it back up. Around 1.8 miles I started to fatigue badly and backed my pace down to 11:30. I got to 25 minutes but was so close to 2.5 miles that I just kept going. So with the 1 mile from before I ran a total of 3.5 miles.

And as I cooled down and stretched, I felt like I could conquer the world. I love a good run like that.

Food was OK yesterday, but I had some ice cream last night. I'm estimating around 400 calories worth, which isn't horrible and I'm not freaking out about it. I ate lots of veggies thanks to the Veggie Lasagna I mentioned yesterday, and the rest of my food was on target. And the scale is still playing along.

Today we have lunch with a client, and I will go for a run around 4 p.m. at the gym. Wind and rain today and a 30 degree drop in temp from this morning to tonight, so it's the treadmill again. I'll probably aim for another 3ish miles.


*Back in the day, DH and I went to kickboxing classes taught by a guy who looked just like Billy Blanks. He had created his own version of kickboxing and called it Budo Kai. We didn't punch anything but air, but it was an empowering class. He called the different segments "rounds" and said he'd work us the equivalent of a 5 mile run in one hour (which was probably not far from the truth). One of the things we'd do was stand in a plie squat and hold our arms out like airplane wings. And we'd stand there forever. He'd keep saying "Come on, you can do anything for 60 seconds." I use that phrase all the time.