This week I only managed 2 runs, that's like a long time low... I thought I could get out yesterday, but we went to the US College Day in London, and then I got pretty stressed out about the subject and running was the last thing on my mind. It is not an excuse, but I allowed it to derail me. My daughter is only a freshman, but it's good that we went - at least we can start exploring the options. She definitely wants to study in US, and both I and my husband know almost nothing about US colleges, since we didn't study in US. It doesn't help that right now, she only wants to consider art and design majors, which makes us pretty nervous. I'm trying to turn her to psychology/neuroscience in which she is also interested, but not as much as art. On top of all that, she would like to continue swimming in college, and from that perspective, a school in NCAA Division 3 would be the best option, as she will unlikely to play a role in Div. 1 or 2, even she walks on. So, I'm trying to look at good colleges in Div. 3 - of course I don't know what they are! She will start working on her college application process next year in her school (they start it in grade 10). So if anyone knows of a good Div. 3 liberal arts school, please let me know.
So today, I finally got out for a run, and decided I need to make it a hard workout since I had 3 days of no running before. I did a long run with a tinman tempo embedded. My garmin unbelievably woke up only a mile into my run, so I could see the pace for the tempo. Ran about 3.5 mi. warmup and hit the faster portion. Felt good and watched the pace in 7:40s for most of the first 2 miles. I knew it was way faster than I should have run, but I felt good and went with it. After about 3 miles, it became clear that this pace was too hard, but I still maintained it as best I could, although it creeped into 7:50s. I pushed it a bit at the end and got 39:20 for 5 miles (7:52 avg.). I am pretty happy with this, as I really should have run 8:00-8:05. Then jogged one more loop around the park and home. Got another course record for my long run.
Total time: 1:44:01 (8:19 pace). | 