One Foot After The Other

Ahhhh to be a teen again.  My son will have cereal 2-3 bowls at a time.  The other day all the bowls were in the dishwasher so I pulled out a salad bowl and told him to just use that and get it over with.

We were both laughing so hard taking these.

he's showing me the love here

Last night was a fail on the clean eating diet.  I kind of felt it coming on in the afternoon, I got the munchies.  Plus I was organizing the office (which I really didn't want to do), so was easily allowing myself to be distracted from the job.  It started with one Nilla Cookie, then a little package of Quaker Crispy Delights, then a half shot of Hazelnut Kahlua (barely a taste) ... up to that point it wasn't too bad.  But then we had friends over and while playing cards the snacks came out and I had about 10 nacho chips (ok still not so bad), but WAYYY too much Spinach Dip on them.  I was kind of disappointed that I let myself stray so easily, but maybe it wasn't that bad.

I even convinced myself that I was "carbo-loading" for the long run I had planned for today.  Yeah ... NOT!

This morning I let myself have a lazy, lazy morning and I layed in bed until almost 9:00.  Then had some breakfast and puttered around on the computer for a bit and headed out for my long run around 10:30.  It was a gorgeous sunny day out today and no way was I wasting that.

I headed out on this run with just the simple goal of running the whole thing at a nice, steady, easy pace.  I'm too competitive with myself and always clock watching.  I did bring a watch, but only for general interest.  I wanted to see how long it would take me to run the distance at a casual pace, without pushing.

At 5K I was about 28 minutes - which was about where I expected to be.  At 10Km I was at 59 minutes (there were two long, steep hills in this section) and again, this is where I expected to be.  I was actually feeling really good that my easy, casual pace had me finishing 10K (with hills) in 59 minutes when just a year ago that was my race pace for that distance. 

At this point I was SO tempted to pick it up a bit and see if I could finish the last section at a faster pace and pick up a few minutes.  But I held myself back because I wanted this whole thing to not be about time.

At 15K I looked at my watch and it said 1:25.  I was like ... WHAT THE _____???  I was expecting to be at about 1:30 or more at this point.  How on earth did I pick up time?  I was trying not to.

In the end, today I ran 16.33 Km (aka 10.15 miles) in 1:32 and 10 seconds.  And it was EASY!  I could have sang the whole way.

Afterwards I felt completely pain free and not winded at all.  I believe at that pace I could easily have continued on to finish a half marathon distance.  And if I did, my finish time would be under 2 hours - without any extra effort.  WHAT?  My goal is to be around 2 hrs, but really I was expecting 2:05 - 2:10.  And the route I took had 4 good hills on it.

After that I had a quick shower and took my son out to his soccer game, where I sat and watched for a good two hours.  And now ... my legs don't hurt at all.  I'm sure I'll feel it a bit by tomorrow morning, but I don't think it will be all that bad.

The only thing I did notice was about 3/4 through this run I was HUNGRY!  I had had a slightly lighter breakfast before, but I had no hunger this morning.  I don't remember ever feeling hungry during a run.  When I came home I right away made myself a protein shake with 3 scoops of protein powder.  Not really per the clean eating diet, but I knew it was what my body needed - plus I didn't have alot of time to cook anything.  I really need to do some experimenting with on the run supplements.  I've tried the Gu/Gel type thing once - though not on a run - and I didn't care for it.

Any suggestions??

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