8 miles in the heartland. I ran from our new house in KY - beautiful, green and plenty of cows. I'm excited. The only problem with a rural road is that although 95% of the time you see no cars - the 5% of the time that you do, they are going 65 miles down a road barely wide enough for two cars to pass and hills and turns are frequent. Hopefully I won't die.
1.5 warm-up and cool down, 5 mile tempo at 6:45. All on the TM.
I worked hard painting and cleaning and getting utilities etc. set up along with having to do the whole closing thing while I was in KY (Sunday to Wed.). My friend that I was staying with lived 30 minutes from my house. I got about 5 hours of sleep a night and didn't even take the time to eat too much. And there is still TONS to do on our little 1250 s.f. house. Yeah - the running just didn't get prioritized after Monday. My husband told me to just count it as a rest week - especially since my legs still don't feel quite right.
I barely got to the gym in time to do this what with not wanting to leave my kids again after they'd already been through 3 days without me. I went to the gym after they fell asleep. This run was confidence building. The 6:45 pace didn't feel too hard. I kept it a little slower to protect my recovering legs. It bothers me that I haven't done much speed work over the last couple of weeks - but I'm trying to let it go.
The darned wind. Oh the darned wind. It was blowing out at my sister's. It was great for the first few miles because it blew me out, then I turned around for the next 5 miles and had my work cut out for me. I kept reminding myself that I became a stronger runner when we were living in AZ and I'm pretty sure its because I was constantly fighting wind. Its kind of like how swimmers wear that second swimsuit.
My legs felt awful for the first four miles or so and then the awkward feeling faded away. I'm grateful that this temper tantrum my legs are throwing right now is happening now and not two weeks before the marathon. I really think (hope) (pray) (desperately desire) that it will go away soon.
So the Garmin watch didn't come back with me from KY. It wasn't in my backpack or in my laptop case. Arrggghhhh! I had a good idea of a way to make 22 miles - I think I actually did 22.2 which looks cooler, but I don't know what my time was. I'm one of those odd individuals who has no watch but the Garmin. It felt like my typical 7:50 pace.
When I trained for my last marathon the 22 mile run I did absolutely hammered me. I was a mess. I didn't feel like a mess today and that was totally encouraging. Not that it was like laying on a hammock drinking strawberry lemonade, but I felt like I could have kept going when it all came to an end.
My husband has talked me into putting the move to KY off until I've run the marathon. I've worked hard to this point, I want to have another kid soon which puts off any other marathon for a year or two, and heck, I'm already signed up. So I'm trying to figure out what I can realistically expect out of myself in a month and a half and I'm thinking a 3:10 could be in the works - just maybe, perhaps, possibly. Yeah, I don't even like to say that out loud.