It's over, man. Let her go.

The last 4 days have been horrible, but I got out today so I have to be happy about that.  My weight is way down (170 is about normal for me)...not surprising with everything that has been going on.

Anyhoo, this was a pretty flat out and back along the river downtown.  I felt really sluggish and definitely dehydrated, big time.  You know when you're about 1/2 mile into your run and you've got cotton mouth, you're feeling sluggish, and have a side stitch that you haven't hydrated well and it's just not going to be a good run.  The sun felt good and it was nice to just get out of the office. 

I didn't wear my Garmin and just went by feel, concentrating on taking it easy and trying to stride out a little more but keep a midfoot strike, work the hamstrings, etc.  I really felt I was keeping about a 9:45-10:00 pace but when I got back and put it into mapmyrun.com, I was very surprised by the splits.  I tried to pick it up coming back, but I was running into the wind part of the time, so I missed my negative splits by a couple seconds.

Out / Back - 8:46 / 8:47, 8:20 / 8:22, 1:45 / 1:44 (0.21 = 8:20 / 8:15 paces)

Slightly slower coming back.  It was a good run...just need to keep it up and DRINK!

Commentary:  If you want funny video clips and pictures, see RivertonPaul.  If you want funny Photoshop'd pictures, see Burt.  Me?  I tell funny (to me) stories.  Ok, so my bare feet have never touched the floor of a locker room...EVER.  I've always been paranoid about getting athlete's foot, etc.  So I always wear flip flops - thongs to some people (I prefer to wear my thongs elsewhere, but I digress) - from the time I take my socks off after exercising, into the shower, until I can stand on my towel getting dressed.  Now that you know my issues and my locker room rituals (TMI, I know), here is the funny part. 

So, I took only the bare minimum to work today in my work backpack and left my gym bag at home since I didn't feel like toting it in, hence no Garmin, etc.  But when I get to the locker room, I realize that I didn't bring my flip flops.  Paranoia sets in...do I let my bare feet touch the floor and the (gasp) shower?  Do I not run?  Do I just not shower (ewww)?

I ran, figuring I'd think of something...and I did.  Got back and wore my socks into the shower.  I'm quite certain the few other people in the locker room thought I was a freak, but hey, I wasn't going to risk athlete's foot the ONE time my bare feet touch the floor!  That's like....nevermind.  At least I wasn't wearing my 80's tube socks!  Could you imagine the looks then???

No run today, too many things going on.  Finished everything in time to go to Silky's Crow's Nest Restaurant and Marina with my wife to meet up with my wife's favorite professor, Dr. G., and some friends in her Master's program to celebrate the end of the semester (and for my wife and a couple others, their graduation!).  Just so happens that the Pens were playing Ottawa in the 5th game of the series so we had to hang out and watch the game to the end - triple OT!  We lost, so we'll be headed up north for game 6 tomorrow night.  We'll finish them off then.

We love Silky's - it's a bar with a restaurant and their food is excellent.  My wife and I got there first and so we waited for a few minutes before ordering our appetizer - chicken nachos, which come on a huge plate piled super high with stuff - had to ask for more jalapenos since they didn't put enough on it for me.  I gotta have a jalapeno per chip or it's just not happenin'.  So we pounded that.  I got water to be good....and the fact that they've changed their policy and sodas are no longer free refills.  So, I wasn't going to pay $2 per Coke.  Probably a good thing.

Their burgers are awesome.  Normally, I'd get one of their special burgers (my wife always gets a steak), but tonight I decided I needed to go for it all and get the Pittsburgher.  It's a 1 pound burger with just about everything on it. I knew after the nachos that I'd only be able to eat about 1/2 of it, but it's only about $0.50 more than the other burgers so I figured that would be two meals for me.  I did, in fact, only eat about half as planned, but since the game went into OT, I started munching on the wings that Dr. G. had gotten and helped polish off the last 8 or so.  I was pretty full by the time we left around 1am.  Enjoy the pics!

Yawn...finally dragged myself out of bed after last night.  I weighed myself after the shower and I account the weight gain to the amount of water my hair was holding since I hadn't dried it yet.  I can't think of any other reason for it.  Looks like I'll need to do a double today to make up for last night.  Oh well, it was worth it!

Update - Whew, just finished my run.  Did close to the same route as Wednesday.  Had to adjust the start location since my Garmin wasn't picking up the signal at the gym.  Anyways, it felt great to run even though I thought I was going to chuck a couple of times today and as I was heading down to the gym, it was bad.  I had a nice run in the sun. 

Splits:  8:10, 8:01 (stopped and rested for 30 sec due to high HR), 8:13, (walked for 1 min here) 8:54.

Pretty fast splits for me, especially since I wasn't feeling that great.  Legs are a little tired after the run so I think I may not do a double today. Instead I may just hit the bike for 45 mins or so this evening.

Whoever said that procrastination doesn't pay off lied!  I was going to go running this morning.  It was raining and I wasn't sure when my daughter's morning side with John Bytheway was going to be done, so I didn't want to go on a long run and then find out that she had been waiting for an hour.  So I decided to wait until she was done.

I started on some projects and finished those up around Noon and when I looked outside it was beautiful!  So, I decided I'd head out.  I needed to be close to my phone so I decided to go to the track and do 8-10 miles.  I wanted to do about 4 or 5x800s and see if I could do them pretty "fast".  I started off with an 400m jog clockwise on the track (against the rules).  I was feeling good, so I kept going to start off with a warm-up mile on lane 1 (yeah, Track Nazi, I said lane 1), and to calibrate the Garmin again to make sure it wasn't some fluke that it was very accurate.  I thought I'd possibly fool it by running the wrong way on the track.  Those Garmin guys are pretty smart!  It remained very true.  I have it set to capture every second, so maybe that helps it to be more accurate.  Anyways, so I started out on my mile and after a lap at 2:08 (8:32 pace), then the second at 2:00 (8:00 pace), I realized that if I pushed it, this easy mile could turn out to be a PR for me.  So I started pushing it and did the third lap in 1:49 (7:16 nice!), then the final lap in 1:35 (6:20!!  holy cow!) for a mile split time of 7:32!  With that split, I'm half way to being 'fast'!  (Note the single quotes since I'm half way there.  haha)  I should have started out with the idea of beating my PR and I probably could have come pretty close to 7:00, which is my threshold for when I'll consider myself fast (without the quotes!)  Oh well, there's always next week/month!

I stopped and got a drink then ran my intervals:

400m - 8:55
800m - 7:11
400m - 9:13
800m - 7:40
400m - 12:48
800m - 7:23
400m - 11:12
800m - 7:35
400m - 13:18
800m - 7:30
400m - 12:00

3mi - cool down @ 8:26 avg pace
800m - 13:47 (very slow jog/walk)
800m - 17:23 (saw a guy with a Just a Short Race shirt on from 2 years ago so I walked with him for a couple of laps while we chatted.  He's about 75 years old and has done a ton of marathons and Halfs.  He's jogging/walking the Pittsburgh Marathon next month.  He was telling me which ones he liked the best, etc.  Super nice guy.  He knows another marathoner at my work that runs about a 4:00 marathon, so I'll have to look him up!)

Cruised home to get the lawn mowed since it was starting to sprinkle.  Just as I finished, it started to rain.  I <3 Procrastinating!