Create.

5.5 easy miles

2 miles with Livvy, nice and easy. Livvy has Beta Thalassemia Intermedia which makes it hard for her to get enough oxygen sometimes (since one of the polypeptides on hemoglobin is missing she does not have as much of a capacity to attach oxygen to her red blood cells). Today seemed to be a harder day for her. With that said, Livvy is probably the least fit in our family (also secondary to her lack of energy sometimes) so it may have had more to do with that than anything. It's kind of a rough cycle for her. She often doesn't have enough energy to exercise, which then leads to her being less fit, making exercise even harder. I may take her to a blood specialist to see if there is anything we can do other than the supplements they advised us to give her when she was an infant. She is so freaking cute though! She is also really liking cheerleading but gets crazy tired when they do conditioning. There has got to be something else that we can do. :-)

After running with Livvy I ran an additional 3.5 miles on the trails up above Greystone. Short rocky trails, but still fun.

10.5 miles which included 8 x 800s and 2 x 400s then a cool down 1.25 with Livvy, Sherm, Smo and Ry. Smo ran the 1.25 while dribbling her basketball. She is a riot! My kiddos have made my life the best dang life I could ever imagine! :-)

Then ...

60 minutes mountain biking with Ry up in the Bear Claw Poppy Trail, specifically the Stucki Loop.

Happy Labor Day, All! Hope you are having a wonderful day! :-)

7 miles: Ry joined me for 5 and Smo for 2

There was only a sliver of moon out. Seemed darker than usual. I sprained my ankle on Monday and was worried that it would bother me this morning, but it didn't hurt one bit. Yahoo!

morning:

9.25 miles with Ry this morning. You could really see the fire in Pine Valley in the pitch dark. Scary.

evening:

2.75 miles by my lonesome with my thoughts on the dark roads. I'm used to the dark roads in the morning, not in the evening. Much more traffic and so I had to be a bit more careful.

My legs felt a bit tired and heavy tonight. This should be my highest mileage week of this training cycle if I get in the miles I am supposed to on Friday and Saturday. Tomorrow is my rest day. :-)

So far this training cycle absolutely zero niggles, pains or aches. I am sure that has to do with all of the slower miles I have been running. Still have no idea how it will play out come race day. Trying to set a race goal but I have no idea what to expect. I don't want too shoot to high and be disappointed, and yet I don't want to shoot too low and self myself short. Go figure. :-)

10.15 miles

Miles 1-7: I don't know if I should really count these first 7 miles as marathon pace (even though they were marathon pace) because they were on a treadmill while Shelbey and I were at the gym waiting for the temps to go down outside. I tried to simulate the first 7 miles of SGM on the TM with elevation and pace changes.

Miles 8-10.15: Up and down 1450 South with Shelbey with our matching flashing arm bands that Lowell bought us. Thank goodness we had them because it was basically pitch black by the time we started around 9:40ish p.m. Had a couple near falls but all was well and lots of fun! This was done at a nice easy pace just enjoying our conversation.

Usually my rest day is Thursday. But for someone reason tonight I just decided to run the 10 miles that I had planned for tomorrow morning. I think I will just run a few easy with Smo before work in the morning and call it good. If all goes well and I can muster up 3 miles tomorrow and 22 on Saturday then I will hit my goal of 70 running miles this week for the peak of my training season with absolutely zero pain, zero ibuprofen, zero niggles, etc. Knock on wood!! :-)

3 easy miles with Smo. I made her swear to me that she would go whatever pace I wanted to and not take off bating me to follow!!! :-)

22.5 miles

Today I got my weekly mileage slightly above where I was hoping!! This may sound silly but I am super happy. It has been difficult for me to muster the motivation and dedication to hit the higher miles since working full time. I know lots of people do it all the time but it has been an adjustment for me. So this was a breakthru in a sense. Granted the miles were not all that fast. But they were miles! :-)

First 20 with Ry (with Shelbey running 15-20 with us). Not sure 100% positive, but pretty certain, that having Shelby there helped Ryan to run each mile progressively faster making his last five miles the fastest of the whole 20! Shelbey is only 24 and I am pretty sure that there is something mesmorizing about a fit woman in her 20s with a pony tail swinging back and forth right in front of a man that makes them go faster! I'm certain it's the power of the young ponytail!!! I have heard numerous men talk about it! It cracks me up!!!! Needless to say, it was AWESOME seeing Ryan push faster and faster at the end of a long run!

Mile 21 by my lonesome while Livvy hurried up and got her running clothes on waiting for me to finish that mile.

Mile 22 and 22.5 with Livvy. Nice and easy as we studied her vocabulary words and talked about how her and her friend rescued some stranded little froggy yesterday! So stinkin' cute! LOVED EVERY SECOND!!!!

Happy day! :-)