Chug-along-chica!

What a lovely little run tonight! Felt fabulous. 4.37 miles in shoes at 9:54 pace on ave. The moon looked like a big golden coin hanging in the sky.

Today was a good day--check out the good fortune....We are replacing out air conditioning unit/furnace (which is actually a bummer, because if I wanted to spend that much money on the house, I'd much rather it be for something FUN like new carpet or countertops, or something). Anyway, these big sweaty guys were working on installing it ALL day. But they couldn't fit it in our attic for some reason. I felt very sorry for them--they worked long and hard, and ended up having to remove the stuff they had worked so hard to install. The good part, though, is that the AC company is now going to give us an even better system for the same price. But I have to stay home and babysit the house again tomorrow, which is a little bit blah.

Another fun thing about today is that I was able to connect with 2 long lost friends--my adopted brother, Gokalp Ekremoglu (who lives in TURKEY!) and James Nuttall, who was a college bud (hi James!) on Facebook.  So I take back all that terrible stuff I said about facebook.  He he.  Don't worry though Sasha--the blog is still the best ever.  :)

Congratulations to all the BRAVE SOULS who ran in the Boston Marathon today! Can't wait to read the race reports..

2.85 at 9:41 pace early this morning.

*Whew* Christine and I are switching back to early morning running together. So now I have absolutely no way out of waking up at 5:30. That's good. Can't leave important stuff like that up to groggy will power.

1.28 barefoot tonight at 10:02 pace.   I'm exhausted.  

2.85 early with Christine at 9:47 pace. The side of Christine's knee was hurting a little bit. So we decided to run a little slower and take it easy. However, neither Christine or I have a very good sense of what speed we are going and ended up running faster than usual. Weird. Usually I try to run faster, and end up slower. The speed that we go is usually dependent on what we are talking about at the time. If we are excited about it, we go faster. At the end I taught her how to scrape her quads. Hope she'll be okay tomorrow.

1.65 More with James and one kid running & the other two in the jogging stroller. I think Sam ran 1 mile in about 10:05 or something like that, and Joey ran .65 miles at 11:10 pace or something like that.

This is Christine. She's an athletic chica! In addition to running, she lifts weights, jumps ropes and/or does some other form of cross training every day. You'd never guess that she was old enough to have a daughter starting college this fall, would ya?

Ditto from yesterday. 2.85 with Christine early at 9:57 pace. Christine's knee started hurting with just .1 to go. That chica just does not slow down! I try to slow her down (for her own benefit!) and she just gaps me. Hope she'll be okay.

Early morning solo run. 2.63 at 10:10 pace. I'll run another 1.5 this afternoon with my kiddos.

Today will be my first full day of homeschooling. Wish me luck! No...PRAY for us. Pray very hard!

Had a really fin day with the kids.  1.37 more miles tonight barefoot.

Nice longer run (for me) with James. We got a babysitter and spent 1:27:00 just running and talking. 10:22 pace. Really more like 10:40ish pace for the first 7 and 8:50 for the last mile and a half. It was really nice spending the time with James.

The only annoyance was that I KEPT getting rocks in my crocs, I mean, shoes. Okay okay, I'll admit it, I've been running in crocs for the last week. I didn't want you to know because I didn't want to seem TOO much like a Sasha wanna-be, but my broken pinky is still swollen, and all other kinds of shoes squish them.

So here is my official product review of $4.88 fake-o crocs from Wal-Mart :

Pros: Very lightweight, very comfortable, very wide toe box to facilitate pinky mutilations, seem very cushioned, but you can still feel the ground a little (esp. when you step on a rock or something) inexpensive, widely available, did not cause any aching knees or hips. I had absolutely no hint of injury this week.

Cons: Rocks get into them--not just every once in a while, but EVERY SINGLE RUN--at least once. Today I had to stop probably 5 times to dump out a little pebble that had hitched a ride. Also they do not stop thorns. I got poked a little by a thorn I stepped on today, although it did not break my skin or anything. They also seem to be very short for the size. I usually wear 7s, and I had to buy an 8 just for my toes to fit without rubbing against the front.

This was a good week for me.  I got out every single morning at the crack of dawn!  Consciousness not required--just miles.