Running with Pixie Dust

Yesterday's run:

Half Marathon Training Week 11, Day 3 (9 mile run)

9.48 miles/2:00:00

Today's workout:

Fire 45 EZ and Stretch 10

423 calories/44:53

The long run actually went incredibly well and I was thrilled!  I was so scared that it was going to be like last week's hell run, but no!  It was great!  I think one of the biggest things was that I did finally settle on a Camelbak and took it out for this run...

The Camelbak is now my new best friend.  Annadel will be my life partner... sorry, David.  I honestly believe that having the extra water (and straight water, as opposed to Cytomax) made all the difference in the world.  I felt better throughout the whole run, I was never thirsty, and I didn't finish and immediately call my mom begging for ice water.  I was afraid it was going to chafe like crazy and it didn't.  I was afraid it was going to bounce all over the place and it didn't.  I was afraid the sound of the water sloshing would bug me (lots of reviews complained about that) and it didn't (partially because I had music blaring in my ears).  My only complaint was that it seemed to be leaking slightly... but honestly, it just made my lower back a little damp which helped keep me cool, and there was plenty of water.  I drank to my little heart's content and still had water left in the reservoir (I refuse to call it a bladder because that's freaking weird) when I got home, which means that it should be absolutely perfect for the half marathon.  Really.  This thing is my bestie.

I tried to maintain around an 11:00 or 11:30 pace for my running intervals, which I did pretty darn well at, especially given all the stupid hills I ran up.  Including my walking intervals, my average pace was about 12:39, which is only a bit higher than the average pace of my tempo runs.  That kind of kicks ass.  That means that an average pace of 13:00 would be totally feasible for my first half, which would mean finishing in under 3 hours.  That's all I want!  I'd be thrilled with a sub 2:45, but that might be something to shoot for with my second or third half.  Really, my only goal is to finish standing, but under 3 hours would really be delightful.

Alas... as great as the run was, the aftermath was not so great.  I rushed through stretching and skipped icing so that I could go to church, which I think eventually bit me in the ass.  I took in plenty of calories (cough bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit cough) and let myself rest.  And by rest I mean lay in bed and catch up on blog reading.  I definitely did take awkward pictures in case you were wondering.  It looked like this:

But even with stretching (I did do quite a bit before church) and lots of carbs and plenty of rest... in the afternoon, I crashed.  I crashed hard.  And I turned into this weepy, emotional wreck who couldn't face blogging because she was too busy crying to her boyfriend about how she didn't want to watch football when she got to LA.  To be fair, I really don't like football... but I don't think it was worth crying over.  I mean, unless you use "I ran 9 miles this morning" as an excuse for everything, including irrational behavior.  Which, I do.  Thank goodness.

And so, I went to bed and skipped other stuff like blogging and being a tolerable human being.  Forgive me.  I was weepy, though, so if I had blogged, it probably just would have been a sad poem.  Consider yourselves spared.

When I got up this morning and still wanted to chop my own hips off, I thought TurboFire was definitely going to kill me.  But I did it!  I got through it!  I did make pretty much everything low impact, but when I compared my stats from today's workout to other times I've done Fire 45 EZ, I realized that by doing everything low impact and taking it easy on my joints, I'd only burned about 40 fewer calories than when I take it high impact.  Seriously?  Forty calories?  What is that, two cups of lettuce?  Stupid.