Training for a Belt Buckle

It was my turn to struggle.  I've been battling depression and stress from work and a battle in my condo association.

While eating my 1/2 pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream tonight, I decided that I needed to force myself to run 3 miles.  So, put on my running clothes and headed out the door to a nearby park. 1/2 mile running warmup, then alternated 50 fast paces with 100 slower paces until the 3 mile mark. .7 mile cooldown.

Average pace 12:11.  Mile 1 11:18; Mile 2 10:27; Mile 3 10:34

I want to start pushing intervals again and get try and get down to below 10 minute miles on the average before the end of 2009.  I am struggling to lose the 'I can't run fast mentality.'  I think I have finally beaten the "I am not a runner" mentality - but need to force myself to not walk at all on runs of less than 4-5 miles. 

Did an ab workout and was stretching when my son called.  He wanted to run/hike Timp the weekend after next, so I told him that I had to run Park City on Saturday, but would miss church on Sunday and do Timp with him (or way behind him).  I leave on a business trip the next day and will be gone all week and then head off to Italy on September 5th, so it will be nice to have a day to spend with him.

Ran to work this morning.  The plan is to run again at lunch and then run home.

Ran home from work this afternoon. Dang, it was hot!  First time in a long time my eyes have burned from so much sweat pouring into them.

My son is up for the night - so I'm enjoying having him around.

I'm giving myself 11.5 miles tonight.  I left at 4:30 and biked 33 minutes to Leslie's house (about 4.3 miles).  I never realized it was almost entirely uphill - boy was that not a lot of fun ?!?!

Les, Harold and I went up Millcreek Canyon and Harold took off biking in one direction while Leslie, Odee (the teeny dog) and I went the other way.  We stopped every 3/4-1 mile to make sure that we gave Odee enough water - so our pace was pretty slow.  We were going to go out for an hour, then decided to go to 4 miles, then decided to see how far the trail went and reached the end at 4.7 miles.  After snapping a couple of pictures we headed back. It was a lot cooler then and I felt really good running. It was actually a pretty leisurely pace because neither of us wanted to carry Odee out if he got too tired. Spoiled dog - he had two women holding up ziploc bags of water for him! (9.4 miles on the trail).

All in all - a great evening (Les even gave me and the bike a ride home since it was dark). I sent Leslie off with my favorite foot massager and she was limping pretty bad - so I hope by now she is icing those heels.

Easy day today.  Walked 3.75 miles at a nice pace.  Stopped at the gym in the middle and did an hour of weights for the lower body.

I was not at all motivated today - but finally loaded up my camelback and headed out around 2:30 p.m.  I ran down to the Dimple Dell Recreation area and hiked/ran to the end of the trail area up in Granger.  Off the trails about 8.3 miles - I stopped to dump all the sand out of my shoes and then tried to figure out where in the heck I was and how to get home.  Took a potty break at a 7-11 around mile 10 and put some ice in my running cap.  Felt a hot spot on my left foot at 12.5, so stopped again and cleaned all the sand off my foot and running socks and that cleared it up.  I was getting pretty tired - so took another potty break at Harmon's with one mile to go and picked up some post race chocolate milk, a steak and a mop.  I'm sure I looked intelligent running home with a mop the last mile.

I just heard Deena Kastor had something pop in her foot and pulled out of marathon. Bummer.