Look Who's Off the Injured Reserved List

Oh man, I was an anxious beast on Monday.  I was so excited to get out and run, but I was also deathly nervous that the pain would be back.  Part of me wanted to run right away, and the other part wanted to wait til the end of the day, just to be safe.

When the clock struck 5pm, I pretty much sprinted out of the office.  I grabbed my running clothes, and proceeded to do the happy dance around my apartment as I was getting ready.  Dare I say, this small injury was what I needed to remind me how much I love to run?  ;)

I started off and was forced to run a fairly hilly route because it's so dark at 5 now.  Boo!  I concentrated on keeping good form and paying attention to any pain, should it crop up.  The first mile to mile and a half I was sucking wind pretty hard, but that was also the extremely hilly portion of the run.  After the first mile and a half, it just felt GOOD.  No aches, no pains, and what I felt was an easy pace was actually a bit faster than I had planned for.

Around mile 3 and a half I did start getting a bit tired, probably because I was HUNGRY.  At mile 4, I looked down at my watch to see what my split was and SPLAT!  Arms and legs flailing through the air, and Jeri biffs it.  Big time.  :p  Oh geez.  Finally have a healthy foot, and trying to wreck my wrists and knees.  Haha.  Nothing was harmed except for the hole in my new running pants.  Sigh.

I ended up doing 5 miles in 45:46 for a pace of 9:10.
1. 9:13 2. 9:17 3. 9:10 4. 9:06 5. 8:59

I just went through my training schedule for the next 3 weeks.  (My race is in 3 1/2 weeks, holy CRAP!)  I knocked the plan down from 5 days/week to 4, which knows my weekly mileage from 37-38-37 to 28-30-29.  For my long runs, I'll do 12-13-12, and I reduced one easy run/week by one mile to lower my weekly mileage.  I have no qualms about lowering any of the other easy runs by a mile if I need to.  However, I don't see my 8:22 pace that runnersworld.com predicted for me happening on race day; I will be happy with a pain free race.  Can't WAIT!

Tonight I am sooooooooo excited to sleep.  Running is my Ambien, so I've been a bit [read:  INSANELY] of an insomniac for the past couple of weeks.  I'm guessing my bed is going to be the greatest. thing. ever.