Just Needed a Little SPEED to Put the Smile Back on my Face

Sorry for the woe is me and my boring training plan yesterday. Thanks for all your suggestions. :) I've never had a training plan call for easy runs back to back before, so I didn't realize how crabby it would make me. I think I'm definitely going to try some hillier routes on the Tuesday easy run, which will make it not easy anymore, and will make me smile. Then I will do an easy/recovery run Wednesday, speed workout Thursday, and easy/recovery Friday. Presto change-o, I'm a happy camper again. :) Also, to help with my training for the Wild West Relay, I may also decide to do the easy runs in one day--one in the morning and one in the evening. Just so my legs know what it's like to run 10-12 hours apart.

This morning I had a tempo run of 5 miles with the middle 3 miles at 8:14 pace and a warm-up and cool-down. It was a tough run, but tough in a good way. One of those runs that makes you feel a little stronger just by completing it. I gave myself a +5/-5 second range for the tempo miles, and pretty dang good.
1. 9:34 (warm up)
2. 8:10
3. 8:15
4. 8:10
5. 9:00 (cool down. for some reason it's REALLY hard for my legs to go slow on the cool down part of a tempo run. it just feels sooooooooooo slow after being speedy for a bit. oh well.)

My ab started hurting just the last .2 miles of the 3rd tempo mile, and I was bummed thinking that I would blow the time, thus ruining my tempo run altogether (very overly dramatic on my part, I know) but was ecstatic when the mile came in the same pace as the first. I must've been running stronger during the rest of the run to make up for it. Go me. :)

About my race on Saturday: I'm beginning to think it didn't exist. Seriously. No results anywhere. No friends or family there to see it. Still no plaque in the mail (as I was told by the race director). Did it only exist in my imagination???? Hah. Luckily I have the t-shirt, that can be my proof I guess. But I'm bummed that I'm not able to look over the stats. Secretly, I just want to know how many boys I beat, since I think only about 10-15 beat me. Heheh. Such a brat.

June in Review
I can't believe it's July already!! Holy crappers. This it the time of month that I look back fondly on my training and make you re-read some highlights for my own amusement. Seriously, how do I have any followers? jk. I hope you like my babble. :)

Total Mileage: 80.4 (increase of 6.1 from last month.)
Time spent: 11:52:52
Number of runs: 19 (I didn't miss a single run in this training cycle, ya me!)
Average run distance: 4.23
Highest weekly mileage: 24.6
Favorite run: 9 mile long run--the one that got me EXCITED for the SF 1/2
Favorite race: Salute the Troops 5k (which may or may not have actually existed...) The one where I PR'd, won my age group, and took 1st place overall woman. Holler. :p

Goals
Also, I've been inspired by aron at runner's rambles to set a mileage goal for myself for the year. Yes, we're halfway through it, so that's "technically" cheating, but I've never ran for a full year. Lame, I know. I usually only run from April-September and then quit.

For the first 6 months of this year, I ran 378.8 miles. A few years ago, when I had intended on running my first full, but wussed out, I had set a goal to run 800 miles in that year. Based on my first half mileage, and the 2 halfs I will be training for during the next 6 months, I would like to hit 1,000 miles. EEEK! No. Let me rephrase that, I WILL hit 1,000 miles. Stay tuned.