Rest Day

Well, despite all my complaining, there are a few positive things about this training. We'll get to those later, but first a little more complaining.

Here is a idea of what our training schedule looks like for this week. Keep in mind this is week 8, so the miles will keep creeping up as the training continues.
Monday - Rest Day
Tuesday - 4 miles
Wednesday - 5 miles
Thursday - Cross training for 45 minutes to an hour
Friday - Rest Day
Saturday - 5 miles
Sunday - 4 miles

Sara and I were really excited that Mondays are rest days, mostly because our guilty pleasure, The Bachelor premiered this Monday. So we decided to get together and watch the show and rest our aching knees. When she got to the apartment, our first dilemma was dinner. We decided if the idea was to rest, then we shouldn't even have to get up off the couch, so we ordered a pizza. Which brings me to the first positive thing about all this running...you can pretty much eat whatever you want and not gain a pound. I do like that. So anyway, we spent the next couple of hours stuffing our faces and watching a bunch of CRAZIES throw themselves at Jason. ABC really outdid themselves with the nutjobs this season.

At some point during the show, we saw a Dairy Queen commercial. You'd think that we'd be such disciplined runners (and so stuffed full of pizza) that a commercial for Blizzards would have no effect on us whatsoever. HA. As soon as the show was over, we hopped in the car and went straight to DQ. Then we sat back down on the couch, ate our Blizzards, and convinced each other that this was no problem since we were going to run 4 miles the next day. Then we decided that Bachelor-Blizzard Mondays should definitely be incorporated into our training. I mean, if you can't enjoy your rest days, then what the crap is the point of them??

Well, back to the running...Tuesday I had to run 4 miles. I decided that there was no way I was going to run 4 miles on a treadmill. Because if there is anything I hate more than running itself, it's running on a treadmill. That freakin STOP button is just too tempting. At least if I am outside and 2 miles from my car, I have to get back to it somehow...no stop option. So I decided to check out the trail at Old Settler's Park. I like it because part of it runs right behind the Dell Diamond (Home of the Round Rock Express), and that makes me think about baseball season, and BAM, I'm happy. Anyway, it was a pretty good trail, I guess. Too many people with dogs though. There was one lady with these two dogs that I kept passing. Every time I passed them, the dogs would start chasing me, and dragging this poor lady behind them. So then I felt compelled to slow down so they didn't rip her arms off, which was not helping me run my 4 miles any faster. So that kind of sucked.

Side note that has absolutely nothing to do with running:
As I was driving back to my apartment from Old Settler's, one of my former kids, Chris, who is one of my favorite people in the world, called me. He is pursuing some acting/comedy stuff, and he had been working on a monologue for an audition that he has in a few weeks. He asked if he could come by and show it to me and see what I thought. So I told him to give me like 15 minutes to shower and then come on over. When I opened my door, he is standing there dressed as a giant SPOON. I hope none of my neighbors saw him. They probably think I am crazy enough. The monologue was hilarious though.

I think I had my first breakthrough last night. We were scheduled to run 5 miles, and I was definitely not looking forward to that. Sara and I decided we would run them together so we could help motivate each other. This time we were running in the neighborhood where she is living, mostly because we were too lazy to drive anywhere else. For the first time, I felt like my body was actually cooperating. We ran the whole 5 miles (well, we took like 2 30-second walk breaks), and talked and laughed the whole time. It was (dare I say??) pretty easy. Now, don't get me wrong, I still felt like my kneecaps were going to fall off when I was done (and I REALLY feel like they might today), but I couldn't believe that I ran 5 miles and didn't die. Who knew?

So, as it turns out, this whole process might not be quite the disaster I thought. Well, I should probably keep my mouth shut - I still have 11 weeks until race day. Think of all the disaster that could ensue in 11 weeks...