Pirate's Day and a Great Long Run

10 miles in 2:02:18 - average pace of 12:13 min/mile, avg heart rate of 159 bpm (aerobic). A great ending to a great training week. I managed to rack up 28 miles total!

I strayed from my diet a bit this weekend. After not getting some news I have been waiting for at work late on Friday - I felt tired and just wanted a big juicy steak. So I went to the store, picked up a couple of nice looking ribeyes and New York strips along with some baking potatoes and brought them home. That with a nice glass of some riesling I was all set. The up side of not hearing the news was that I could just relax and enjoy the 3 day weekend!

Saturday was a day off from training. It was my husband's birthday so we did a "Pirate Day." We watched Pirates 1 on Fri night, Pirates 2 on Sat morning, and went to see Pirates 3 at the theater. We also wore our Pirates of the Caribbean t-shirts which we had picked up in the Magic Kingdom near the Pirates ride. It was a fun day!! A bit more straying from the diet by eating cake....ah well.

This morning I slept in a bit - and didn't get on the road for my long run until around 8:30 am. The sun was already pretty high in the sky and there were few clouds to be seen. The temperature was in the low 70s already with a forecast high of 86 deg F. So, I put on plenty of sunscreen and brought plenty of drink for the run. I have not replenished my supply of Cliff Shots so I ate a soy pudding before the run and brought primarily Gatorade to replenish along the way. I brought 21 oz of Gatorade along with 6-7 oz of water on my fuel belt.

I felt pretty good through the run and maintained about a 12 min/mile pace which was good. About the time I was nearing 8 miles I could begin to feel my legs wearing out a bit - not surprising since that was the longest run I had done to date this year. I pushed through the last couple of miles in the sun and had enough fluids to get me home.

This coming week my focus will be on sticking to the training plan, eating healthy and getting good sleep. Per Terry's advice, I am hoping that in a week or so my body will adjust to the new training schedule. The heel seems to be doing ok - I don't feel the need to ice it but I am using ibuprofen when it aches a bit to control swelling. I have had to retire one pair of my running shoes that has about 400 miles and over a year on them. I have a second pair that is nearly a year old with just over 300 miles and a third pair that is newer with just over 300 miles. I am going to try a new type of shoe to see if it works better with the heel. My current shoe is Brooks Addiction.

I am so excited to be training with so many fine runners through the summer and into the fall. I like the idea suggested by Maddy (I think) that we find a way to track all or our mileage. We could all just report our total weekly miles once each week and someone could put it on a spreadsheet to total it up. I am not savy enough to post spreadsheets on my blog. Could we start a new blog that we can all log into to post our results? I am open to ideas!