Listening to Nature's Music AKA iPod Fail

Saturday we had wedding #2 in 8 days to attend. What is with everyone getting married lately? Geeeeeeeez. jk. :) After my run I got all gussied up to attend the wedding. The wedding was good, the reception was good, the red wine was cheap, thus giving me dirty teeth for the last couple hours of the reception, but oh well. All in all it was a good night. Of course I had to take an adorable picture with Mr. Handsome. :)

I drank very little, or technically just a little compared to everyone else, as I had planned on running a 6 miler the next day. Of course the weather was less than favorable at 6pm when my 2pm lunch had finally settled. Just as I was grabbing my running shoes, I hear the start of thunder. It's like the weather can sense me getting excited for my run! Grr. So in 50 degrees, steady 15 mph wind with 25 mph wind gusts, and 90% humidity (really? how is it that windy, yet still dripping wet humid?) I set off for my run. As soon as I got outside, I realized my iPod wasn't working. Now I should mention that I was Crabby McCrabberson yesterday. All day. For no apparent reason. The iPod malfunction set me off into a tizzy. Usually when this happens I can plug the stupid thing into my computer and it corrects itself. Nope, my cord was at my apartment, and I was at Taylor's. After spending a good 15 minutes trying to search the web for troubleshooting advice, and having none of it be successful, I set out for attempt #2 at my 6 mile run. I should note that Tay did offer to let me use his old school iPod, but listening to country for 50-ish minutes would cause me to drown myself in the river I was running next to. (No offense to you country fans, just not my cup of tea.)

I prepared myself to have the crappy run of all runs, yet I didn't. I haven't had an iPod-less run since I started running (longer than a mile or two) 3 years ago. It was pretty cool. I used to be a bird watcher as a kid (nerd alert, I know.... I lived in the country with no kids nearby so I learned to entertain myself.) so I started to see if I could match the birds with their calls. It was pretty entertaining and helped pass the time. Plus I realized that I had a soundtrack playing in my head anyway.

After my speedy (for me) 4 miler yesterday, I wanted to see if I could do a quick-ish 6 miler today. As some of you may have heard me complain about 6 milers in the past, I wanted this one to go down in the books with a :). And it did. I think. :) 6 miles in 53:45 for 8:58 pace.

1. 9:30

2. 9:03

3. 9:09 (um hello wind, you really suck)

4. 8:46 (but you're so delightful when you're at my back!)

5. 8:54

6. 8:23

I think I've learned that 9:30-9:45 is my very comfortable dare I say, jogging, pace. I can ran that pace for quite a long time without too much physical exertion. 8:30-9 mm definitely takes more concentration, but not too terribly much effort. If I focus on stretching out my stride just a little bit (instead of short, baby comfortable strides at my "comfortable" pace) I can usually hit those paces. Awesome.

When I was entering into mile 4-ish of the run, I had a random thought, that made me smile. When I was in junior high, I ran on the Varsity track team. Before you get too excited, I'm from a super small town, so it really wasn't that big of a deal, but it was cool to get to do sooooo many meets each spring. During junior high I competed in the 1600 m. run, 3200 m. relay, the 800 m relay or 400 m relay, and occasionally the 800 m run (or dash as they sometimes like to name it, HA!). There was one other girl in my class who was good at the mid-long distances who would compete against me (or with me in the 3200 m. relay). She was better than me. Oh sad, I know. Unfortunately for me, no one (including me) was aware that I was a sprinter, whoops! So I was stuck with the mid-long distances.

Even with the competitiveness (ok, it was probably just me being competitive with her) we were still best friends, and I think we pushed each other in practice, and also meets to perform our best.  Ok, enough with the background. The summer after our 7th grade year, we were both WAY excited about track and running, but I used to always make fun of her for "running for fun."  I specifically said, "Only crazy people run for fun."  As I was running in rotten weather, with no iPod and sweet tunes to enjoy I thought to myself, I'm officially insane.  And had to smile.  :)

It smells like track season :)

Step outside for a minute. Take a deep breath. Do you smell that? It smells like track season. :) Which is kind of funny since our track season would always start right around March 13th each year, but somehow I must have blocked out what it smells like to run through snow. Every spring I get oh-so excited when this time of year hits because it brings up such awesome memories.

Photo to the right is our 800 m relay team & also our 1600 m relay team after the State Track Meet my senior year. We placed in both events and broke the school record in both. Yay speedsters, I'm the scrawny one second from the left.

Photo below and left is me and Kim's hand off for the 1600 m relay. Look at that sexy leg muscle! Ha. And the 7' tall leggy monster to my left in blue. Yikes.

Brief sport history: I played basketball, volleyball, and ran track in junior high and high school. Basketball was my one true love, but track was a very, very close second place. Come to think of it, the main reason I was good at the other two sports was because of my quickness. Thanks again track.

I loved that track was an individual sport (other than the relays, of course). I loved that you got out of 2-3 half or whole days of school to go to meets. I loved that I got to lay around with my boyfriend at the time at our camp when we weren't running or high jumping (yes, we both sprinted and high jumped, and yes we were precious). I loved that all that was required of the sport was to run--fast. As fast as you could. Seems so easy. I loved losing to a girl in a race one day (not true, I hated and still do, hate losing), and in two days beating her. I loved the medals that were handed out on the bus ride home, especially the gold ones. I loved taking the underclassmens' leftover lunches and snacks on the ride home with the throwers, because we were hungry. I loved being competitive against myself and against the other area sprinters. But mostly I just loved to run.

I constantly have dreams about running high school track again, and am somehow disappointed when I wake up and realize I'm not longer in high school [note: Please notice this only applies to high school sports and not high school in general. The "glory days" if you will.] I guess this is where my love of running comes from. Even if it is much, much, much farther than a 100 m or 200 m dash. :)

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In current running news, I had an awesome speed/interval workout on Wednesday night. Now you may understand why I look forward to the speedy runs so much. Ha. I did 1 x .25 as a warm up and then 7 x .25 at mile pace (roughly) with .10 walk breaks in between. I did them on the treadmill since I'm still without garmin and here were my times/splits:

warm up .25 - 2:16/9:04 pace

.25 1:43/6:52 pace (3 total at this pace)

.25 1:42/6:48 pace (3 total at this pace)

.25 1:39/6:36 pace (just one because 3+3+1=7, man I'm lame)

Last night I had an easy 3 mile run to do after work. Subconsciously, or maybe not so subconsciously, I always seem to try to beat my Tuesday easy run time with my Thursday easy run time. Which is stupid because it's supposed to be an easy run. I 'm an idiot. Either way, I failed. I got done running and felt like I had busted my butt, thinking I was very close to 8 minute miles or slightly slower, I was disappointed to look at my watch and see closer to 9 minute miles. Oh well. For my easy runs, I should be at 9 mm pace, so ha. My legs are smarter than my brain. Wow, that's sad. I finished 3.02 miles in 26:54 for an 8:55/pace.

Have a great weekend everyone!