All it takes is all you've got

Easy 8 around Standley Lake. 

Abe's first day of Kindergarten!  He'll go every day from 11:45-2:30.  Now I can take naps at the same time as my girls after lunch and not feel guilty.  :)  I am really excited for Abe to learn new things and make new friends too.  He's a really smart kid, and I'm sure he'll do great!

Of course my baby chooses the night before my long run to cry from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.  I guess she doesn't really have a choice when those teeth decide to descend.  Poor thing.  So I only got 5 hours of sleep, but at least I got a nap this afternoon.  And believe me, I'll be going to bed early tonight!  22 miles is exhausting!!  I went alone early this morning.  Didn't make it out last night to plant water bottles so I just carried the fuel belt and stashed it at mile 7.5 since I knew there would be water at my turn around point and I could pick it up on the way back.  Then I stashed it again on the way back at mile 17 and planned to go pick it up later, which I haven't done yet...guess I'll be taking the kids for a ride this evening.  I like the fuel belt for its convenience but it does tend to give me a bellie ache after more than 5 miles.  The route I have been doing for my long runs has drinking fountains at mile 1.5, 5.25, and 10 anyway so its easy to improvise but I do still like to have gatorade instead of water for the energy.  I don't mind carrying a couple of gu's in my hands though...much better than wearing the fuel belt. 

I noticed the billions of prarie dogs near the sewage treatment plant between miles 7-9 and again coming back through  miles 13-15 are starting to look very plump and well-fed.  I guess the grass and weeds are very fertilized in that area.  The plumpness of the prarie dogs must mean that fall is coming.  Those lil' dogs get so fat right before winter and then I dont see them for 6 months and they re-appear in the spring looking all skinny and hungry.  Funny how this cycle is pretty much opposite for me.  I get skinny after working out all summer and then I usually put on a few pounds through the winter/holidays and when spring comes its time to go get skinny again.   

As you can see, 22 miles all by my lonesome can get a little boring.  I did have one exciting event right near the end that captivated my thinking for a few moments.  I saw a person on a cruiser bike that I SWEAR was a man dressed as a lady.  S/He was all decked out in a nice silk sweater, purple polka-dot hankie over his/her wig-looking hair, pressed green capris, and a calm, serene look on his/her face...almost as if s/he was asleep; looked a lot like little red riding hood.  I only noticed him/her for a few moments as we passed, so I didn't get a great look...but I was pretty alarmed with the masculinity of his jaw and largeness of his clean shaven legs.  BURT?  Did you happen to ride your bike through Denver today? 

Went to bed early last night, and slept in 'till 6:30 a.m. ahhhhhhhhhh.  9 hours!  That is amazing!!  Luckily Ali slept through the night too.  She must have been exhausted from the night before.  Aaron left at 5:30 a.m. to go Mt. Biking in Salida with friends so I just slept in and took the kids to the gym later today to run on the treadmill.  I am not a big fan of treadmill running, but I don't mind it about once a month.  I just put the ipod in and tuned out.  My body felt pretty tired from yesterday, but the 7 easy miles loosened me up a bit.  After the first half mile extra slow, I locked in the pace at 7:41, which felt pretty good.  Stretched for a long time afterwards.  Aaron finally got home around 7:40 tonight and he is pretty exhausted too after 35 miles of Mt. Biking on beautiful single track in southwest Colorado.  I guess we'll be going to bed early again tonight.  I don't think I've ever appreciated sleep more in my life than I do right now...'course this is the most consecutive weeks of high weekly mileage I have ever done in my life too.  Time to start the taper.

Got another nice long sleep last night.  Thank goodness.  Ali did wake up crying around 3 a.m. but I just put my pillow over my head because I was too tired to get up and I think Aaron got up and helped her calm down.  I also slept through my alarm, or I guess I got up and turned it off quickly but don't remember...which is SO unlike me.  But I must have needed the sleep.  Woke up around 6:45 and ran 8 miles at a slow recovery pace again.  Stretched for about 30 minutes afterwards and am feeling quite a bit better now.  My last pilates reformer class of the session is today and I have a chiropractor appointment tonight, so I should be feeling even better by tomorrow. 

More recovery running.  The last part of my body to feel recovered is the lateral parts of my calves...I believe its called the peroneous longus muscle, if I remember correctly from Anatomy 101 at BYU.  That muscle used to get super tight when I did a lot of steeplechase drills and hurdle work in college.  Apparantly 22 mile runs aren't too kind to it either.

I feel pretty good though, other than the tight calves.  I'll ice more today and roll out on the foam roller and stretch a lot so I'm ready to race tomorrow night. 

Jogged an easy 5.5 miles this morning to shake out the legs some more.  Got home at 7:00 a.m. and woke up my family to get dressed and walk over to Standley Lake.  Our friends invited us to go waterskiing with them this morning at 7:30, so we just walked the 0.1 mile to meet them at the dock.  It was super fun to get out on the wake board again...its been about 3 years since I've done that!  After waterskiing for a couple of hours we took the kids to their primary party at the church for about an hour and came home to eat lunch/take naps.  I really appreciated the nap as I was pretty tired from the busy morning.  Slept for an hour and felt a lot better and ready to race.  Picked up our babysitter at 3:00, got changed, and left for the race at 3:30.  Arrived in Denver around 4:00 and waited in line for a bit to get our race numbers and my skirt/Aaron's shirt.  Jogged back to the car to change into my running skirt and leave our race bags.  This is my first time even trying on a running skirt....pretty comfy actually.  The only thing I don't like about it is that it feels too immodest to do any sort of inner thigh stretching and also when I run fast, it feels like the skirt is flying up in back and revealing my bum, but my husband promised me it wasn't, so I trusted him.  

Warmed up for about a mile and did 4 strides.  Legs felt a lot better than they have all week, although maybe still a little tight. 

Race started at 5:00.   Went out with the lead lady, a professional triathlete training for her second Ironman in November.  We ran together for the first 1.5 miles.  After about the first mile and a half I started to feel pretty comfortable at the pace we were running and remembered that the men had started just 3 minutes behind us so I'd better push it if I wanted to win, so I picked up the pace a bit and the other woman slipped back.  

Mile 1- 5:45, mostly uphill, felt pretty tight.  Mile 2- 5:45, half dowhill, half uphill, starting to loosen up.  Mile 3- 5:32, finally in the groove, half uphill, second half downhill, decided to leave it all on the course since the prize money was on the line and I knew that if a guy caught me any time in the last half mile I wouldn't have a chance of staying with him, so I guess you could say I was running scared.  Finished in 17:27, average 5:37 pace.  The first guy was 20-30 seconds behind me, a tiny Kenyan lung on a stick...his time must have been around 15:00.  

After I finished I had some water and jogged back to run in with Aaron.  He was pretty maxed out, but finished strong right around 20:00.  Not bad for a 200 lb guy who has only been training 0-25 miles a week sporatically over the past 5 weeks.

We ate free Chipotle Burritos afterwards and bypassed the free beer, opted for chocolate soymilk instead.  YUM!  Awards ceremony was part of the block party afterwards, got my $500 claim certificate and met Nicole DeBoom, former Ironman World Champ and owner/race director.  FUN NIGHT!