in which Katie walks and runs

Mentally, Tuesday and Thursdays runs just sucked. I can't even think of any redeeming qualities from either run. They frustrated me to no end. The one benefit was the Orange Leaf after Thursday's run to celebrate Krissie's anniversary. So needless to say, I was dreading my weekend runs. Kids were going to their dads on Friday (and the girl child screamed and cried "but I want to stay with you mommy!"...nothing like breaking my heart. sigh...love that girl.). I had plans to run Saturday in Midway and Sunday at the RunTheBluegrass course.

Saturday's run was supposed to be 8 miles. I had considered doing it at RTB, but decided I didn't want to do all those hills. So Midway it was. I ended up running with a new friend. I had set my Garmin to run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute. That lasted a good while, but we eventually just started walking when we needed to. It was a great run. Not awesome, but MUCH better than my weekday runs. The almost two hours that it took seemed to go by so quickly. I rarely had company for any long runs when I trained for RTB, so to have someone to chat with mad a huge difference. I honestly don't think I would have gone the whole 8 planned if I hadn't had company. The best part was that it was her first run at the 8 mile distance and watching her feel that accomplishment at finishing, was pretty damn awesome. 

The rest of the day consisted of donating blood, stopping at a yarn store, going to the library (picked up info about being a soccer mom, really just the registration though). Went home and tried to nap, that didn't work as well. Went to a friend's house for girl's night and stayed waaaaay too late and ended up getting home at 1:30am and after getting stuff ready to run in the morning, got in bed around 2am. 

Sunday I had decided to run 4, but had originally been open to doing the 7.5 mile route as well. Though after the lack of sleep, I decided the 4 mile course was a better option. I woke up a little after 5, left my house a little after 5:30, met someone who lives near me and we drove together to Keeneland. The run started out bad again. For some reason my legs just don't want to move when I first head out. My body started to get with the program a little better for the second mile. I stopped and took some pictures, it is such a gorgeous course. I honestly don't think there is a more beautiful place to run. The third mile rocked. A little into the fourth mile, passed someone who had started out before me, it was nice to know that even though I felt like my legs were lead, they were still going strong even at the end. The last quarter mile of the run, I was busting my butt, trying to be just a little faster in the fourth mile than I was in the third. It was worth it, I consistently had negative splits the whole run. 

I got to thinking about why I'm going much slower than I used to. I never had a chance to acclimate to the heat with the weeks I had to take off. Which is another good reminder to be okay with going slower now. I'll be good come fall when the weather cools down some.