Craziness

Saturday, I missed the 18-miler because I had to attend classes. When I attempted to leave the house for school, my car battery was completely dead. After about 25 minutes of attempting to jump the battery, the hubby finally had to push my car out of the way so I could take his truck to school. Hmmm...my car is not even 2 years old...seems a little odd that the battery would die. Of course, this is par for the course with my SUV so far. Then, when I arrived home from school, my poor kiddo had a temp of 103! Poor baby! Luckily, Tylenol got the fever under control.

Sunday, I woke up around 5:30 and headed to the park for 4 loops. I was determined to actually make all 4 loops. If you remember my last Sunday 12-miler, it turned into a 9-miler and then into a 6-miler. I have a way of talking myself out of running the entire distance when I'm running alone. This time I decided to not even think about it. I was doing 4 loops and that was it. End of story. No negotiations.

My philosophy was to run at a comfortable pace and just take the 5/1 segments one at a time. Off I went, Galloway-ing it for 4 loops. The 1st loop went well. I felt terrific and energized. Well, that is once I got over my initial bitching and moaning about the humidity. The temps felt great (around 76), but the air felt thick. I was feeling gross by the end of my 1st mile. If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you'll know that I always complain about the heat, humidity, etc. Luckily, I usually get over it and just keep running. I think I would complain every time unless the weather was absolutely perfect...60 degrees and 30% humidity. Unfortunately, those days are far and few between in Houston, so you will hear me complain more often than not. Sorry!

I stopped at my car between loops and allowed myself 1 minute to grab some gatorade, water & Gu. My second loop felt very good and my third loop felt as good, if not better than the second! The fourth was a bit harder, but overall I felt strong the entire way. And, I checked my splits at every mile...much to my surprise, they were pretty consistent...between 11:27 & 11:32 every single time with the exception of mile 11. On mile 11, I must have slowed down quite a bit without realizing it, because I clocked it at 11:48. Overall, I was pretty pleased with this! Usually, when I run the long run with Houston Fit, we tend to keep a 12 - 12 1/2 minute pace. I think faster time was due to 1) the cooler weather or 2) the lack of chit chatting with my friends. Honestly, I'd pick the chit chatting with slower times any day. To me running over 6 miles alone is downright boring.

One difference over my previous long runs was that I just let my mind wander. Sometimes, I think I try to hard to come up with interesting topics to think about. Today, I just kind of zoned out taking in the sound of my steps on the gravel, occasionally checking out my fellow runners (noticing how graceful some of the faster folks look when they run), etc. I don't think I thought about work once, which was nice.

I was so happy to see my car again on that final loop, but little did I know that I was in for a big surprise. My car key was missing! I looked around the perimeter of my car and thought that I locked it inside my car. I just cancelled my OnStar service last week, but lucky for me it doesn't expire until next week! I spotted one of the HoustonFit coaches sitting under some trees and asked if I could borrow his cell phone to call OnStar. I don't know his name, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for letting me use your cell phone! OnStar opened my doors, but my key was not there. About that time, another Houston Fit coach jogged up and offered to give me a ride. I thanked her for the offer, but decided to look around a bit for the key and then call my hubby for help. I called my hubby and knew it would take awhile for him to get there, so what else was there to do???? So, I went for another loop! This one was more walking than running, but it gave me a chance to see if I could find my key. No luck! I had been meaning to make a couple of copies for months now, especially since my hubby had misplaced the only other copy several months ago. Luckily, we were able to locate that missing key by searching the house like crazy. Otherwise, I would have been paying the locksmith $150 for a new one (I also spent about 30 minutes calling locksmiths from Beck's Prime, just in case).

So, that was my weekend and my adventures. By the way, on the way back to the park to pick up my car, we got stuck in some major traffic. From the looks of it, there were about 10 cars involved in an accident. Many prayers to the folks involved...hopefully, no one was hurt!