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September 30, 2004

I miss running!

So I have not run for like four days now. It is making me crazy! I miss running so much. I'm not sure if it's the time to think, or getting outside (because when I think about how much time I've spent outside since Monday it is kind of abysmal), or what, but I miss it.

This morning I did the elliptical at the hotel gym (which is actually fairly decent) for 35 minutes. Yesterday, I walked 1/2 mile while waiting for the elliptical, then did the elliptical for 30 minutes. And last night I went to a yoga class in Westwood, which is about 20 minutes away from here. The yoga class was tough in parts when I had to flex my quads a lot but it felt really good to stretch out my legs, arms, and back. I got an introductory one-week pass so I'll go to another class on Monday. It is fun to do some different stuff while I am taking time off - tomorrow I'm planning on doing a yoga class in the morning in Denver and then, time-permitting, going mountain biking.

I may show up at practice on Saturday morning to run the warmup and cooldown with the group, since I haven't been to practice in ages, and then I'll be running/walking the Race for the Cure on Sunday. My goodness the weekends go by so quickly!

I am already plotting and planning for my next marathon because I think I could BQ fairly easily on a flat course. A girl that beat me in the marathon has recommended Tucson, which is in December, and I hvae a friend who wants to go to Phoenix for the rock and roll marathon in January, which could be a good one. I don't know if December/January would be too soon to try another marathon but I guess I'll evaluate how I feel. I've also always wanted to go to Austin so I may look into that one as well (Meghan isn't that the one you're doing?). One nice thing about traveling is that I can go almost wherever I want on the weekends and at least the airfare is free!

I'm flying home tonight at 5:00, so I should get in around 7:15, and I am SO EXCITED!! I love New Jersey but I really love being home.

Posted by barb at 6:25 AM | Comments (2)

September 28, 2004

Feeling Better Every Day

Well I feel much better than I did yesterday. Walking up and down stairs is still not my favorite thing but my hips and my knee are significantly less sore. I think that by tomorrow, when I'm planning on going to a yoga class, I will feel mostly normal again. I miss running and can't wait to start again!

Depending on how I feel after work I may do an easy 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer at the hotel (this hotel actually has a decent gym which is cool)... or I might go to the mall and buy makeup!

(I love buying makeup but never wear it so hopefully I will refuse this temptation)

Posted by barb at 1:02 PM | Comments (2)

September 27, 2004

Last Week and the Marathon

Last week was not very exciting from a running standpoint. Tapering is tapering. Not running very much and hanging out on the beach and at the pool and stuff is lots of fun! It was a good thing I didn’t want to train much because there were not a lot of great places to run where we were staying in Mexico. However, the condo where we stayed (which is one quarter owned by Matt’s parents) was absolutely fabulous and the location was great. It is about 15 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta and about 5 minutes south of an adorable little town called Bucerias. The week was so incredibly relaxing and fun = eight of us went and everyone had a great time. It is amazing how warm the water in the ocean is there this time of year. And the western coast of Mexico is really gorgeous; it’s a very pretty contrast of coastline and mountains. The rain forest starts maybe 45 minutes or an hour outside of PV, which is so cool. On Friday we did a canopy tour in the rain forest where you swing around the rain forest like a monkey. That was a lot of fun. I am amazed at how quickly the week passed by!

Here is a brief running summary:
Saturday: travel day, no running
Sunday: 3 miles easy
Monday: 5 miles easy, swimming
Tuesday: 5 miles easy, swimming
Wednesday: 3 miles easy, swimming
Thursday: no running, short hike to a waterfall
Friday: 6 miles easy
Saturday: 3 miles easy, travel day

Our flight got in at 6:00 pm mountain time on Saturday. Matt’s mom picked us up from the airport and we dropped friends off, picked up dinner, and went home (and watched The Golden Bowl which I do not recommend). I went to bed around 10:00 and tossed and turned quite a bit due to nerves. Woke up at 5:10 Sunday morning and drove to Boulder. The marathon started at 7:00 am, with about 650 entrants (the half marathon had about 2100). It was about 50 degrees out at the time – cold! – but I stuck to my plan of wearing shorts and a sports bra because I knew it would warm up and I didn’t bring any clothes I wanted to abandon. I will try to find an elevation map of the marathon but basically it is hilly, about 23 of 26 miles are on dirt roads, and of course it is at almost 6000 feet of elevation. Wow that is a great first marathon, I know. But it was so pretty! I am so glad I did it.

My initial plan was to run the first 13 miles at 9:00 pace and the second 13 miles at 8:00 pace and that frankly did not happen. Here are my splits:

Mile Time
1 8:37
2 8:21
3 8:20
4 8:09
5 8:10
6 8:17
7 8:18
8 7:52
9 7:40
10 7:36
11 8:47
12 8:34
13 7:43
14 7:43
15 8:01
16 8:04
17 9:08
18 8:12
19 9:12
20 9:13
21 10:13
22 10:43
23 10:34
24 9:54
25 11:33
26 10:54
26.2 1:36
Total 3:51:36

Notice the great implosion that was my last six miles. I felt great through about mile 18 (mile 17 was about a minute slow due to a bathroom stop), but once I hit 20 miles, my legs started to hurt and I was shuffling. The 21st mile of this marathon is just plain evil as it is almost completely uphill.

Here are my primary lessons learned:
- When you are training for a marathon, you must run over 20 miles. I did not do this and I know that my body was worse off for that.
- I do think that if you feel great and you are running downhill early on (see miles 8, 9, 13, and 14) you should not try to slow down but should run them as fast as feels comfortable. I don’t think that my implosion later had anything to do with this.
- It is not a big deal if you don’t practice drinking and eating while you’re running unless you’re really fast. I didn’t practice any of this and it was fine.
- In general do not run a hilly marathon at altitude as a first marathon.
- Running a marathon is a great accomplishment that I am so happy to have completed!

I don’t know how much more there is to say. I actually didn’t feel bad during the day yesterday and oddly wasn’t very hungry at all. I just wanted a bagel with cream cheese – which was darned fine, I have to say.

Posted by barb at 7:32 PM | Comments (3)

The Day After

My legs hurt so much. Every time I stand up it is like agony! But I’ve been trying to get up and walk around at least every 30 minutes and that really seems to help.

I still need to write a lot more about the race (and my humorous splits) and my 22 miles of running in Mexico but for right now I have a question and I am hoping for a little bit of input from people that are more experienced than I am.

I have a lot of muscle soreness which I am not too worried about but my knee really hurts. Like you know the difference between when something’s sore and when it feels like an injury. It feels like an injury. On the outside of my knee it is very tender and when I walk it hurts. So what I am wondering is, should I freak out about this and get an appointment with my physical therapist as soon as possible or assume that it’s part of the first-marathon recovery process and it’ll feel better soon?

Any thoughts are appreciated. Other than that I’m going to enjoy a day off from exercise and watch Monday Night Football!

Posted by barb at 3:11 PM | Comments (1)

September 26, 2004

Back! And No Longer a Marathon Rookie!

I will write a big entry soon but here are the very brief highlights:
- Mexico was amazing. When I put pictures on the internet I will post a link for those who are curious.
- I ran and finished my first marathon today! I ran 3:51, I know I could have run faster but the course was totally hard and at 20 miles it became a little bit of a death march. But I had a great time and although I am sore right now I am excited to run another and improve.
- In the course of running my first marathon I ran a half marathon PR. Weird!
- Thanks to everyone for your good wishes, support, and interest! I hope everyone had a great week, I can't wait to catch up on everyone's entries.

Posted by barb at 11:14 PM | Comments (5)

September 17, 2004

BRIEF Update

I have so much to do today it is crazy. But while I am at a computer I wanted to make one last pre-vacation, pre-marathon update.

I ran 9 miles easy this morning and will probably run 3-4 this evening. This will be my last 'real' day of training before the marathon. I am feeling good and luckily have not been attacked by any insects so far!

Thanks to everyone who has wished me luck in the marathon - this is such an awesome community of bloggers, everyone is so supportive and inspring!

I hope everyone has a great week and I can't wait to catch up on what everyone's been up to when I get back.

Happy trails! I will drink a margarita for everyone on the beach :)

Posted by barb at 1:01 PM | Comments (2)

September 16, 2004

MUD

Running in the mud is really fun. However, running in the mud makes your shoes smelly, wet, and basically revolting, which is fine except when you have to immediately put them in a suitcase! Whoops.

Oh well, I had a great time running in the mud this morning. I cannot reiterate enough my love for the Northeast! It is so great here! Last night I drove to Manhattan which was a fun adventure that I will not repeat (I plan to go there a lot but parking in Manhattan is ridiculous)... and had the best Chinese food I have ever had. What a great city. I figure this is the closest I'll ever get to living there so I'd better take advantage of it!

Anyway because of staying out later than normal I was a little tired and stiff when I woke up this morning but I didn't feel too bad. I set out on the same route that I've run every day this week - Yes I am boring but it's really nice and far better than any other run I've done here - planning to run 8-10 miles at a very easy pace. A light rain was falling and it was very pretty and quiet. Being half asleep as I was I just kind of zoned out for a while and then turned around after 45 minutes or so. Then I decided to start running around in the mud which made me filthy but it was great! I ran around on trails for a good 15 minutes which is the most non-road time that I have found since I started working out here. This is very exciting and I think at times when it hasn't been too rainy here the trails will be really nice.

The more I think about my decision to run Boulder Backroads instead of Chicago the more happy I am about it. For some reason, choosing this marathon takes the pressure off me so much that I seem to feel better about almost everything. I even feel better about traveling! But I think that frankly I have just made a mental adjustment to be more positive about everything because that kind of a mindset seems to literally make everything better.

Of course that could have something to do with the fact that I'm about to go on a beach vacation. I don't know when I will update but I will be composing lots of mental entries over the week and will write a small novel after the marathon, which is barely over a week away. This is so exciting!

Posted by barb at 8:32 AM | Comments (4)

September 15, 2004

Signed Up!

A quick update - I have officially signed up for the first marathon I will actually run, the Boulder Backroads Marathon. Now I have signed up for Chicago months ago as well of course but I am definitely running this one especially now that I have publicized it!

I am pretty excited to be honest. Low expectations, hoping just to finish and have a good time! Woo hoo!!

Posted by barb at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

Wednesday

The Wednesday before you take a week off is always a LONG day. Especially when you are traveling and have been away from home since Sunday afternoon and feel kind of homesick due to the fact that you feel like crap from getting stung by a bee in the face.

However I am actually in a fantastic mood today due to several factors:
1. GREAT run this morning - 11 miles, did my fartlek workout (that I was technically supposed to do yesterday) on the way back, felt awesome. Also feel like I should totally run this marathon on 9/26 because I have basically run one marathon over the past two days - 26 miles in two days - and feel absolutely fine. I honestly think that if I wanted to run again this evening, I would be fine. I will talk a little more about the run later.
2. Getting lots of sleep. I didn't go to bed at 7:00 again but I did sleep for about 8 hours which is really essential to my feeling of well-being and my running well.
3. Going on an adventure tonight - I'm heading in to Manhattan to meet up with one or two friends from college. I am so excited about this, it is a great way to take advantage of being here both by visiting one of the coolest cities in the world and by being able to see friends that live here that I hardly ever see otherwise. I would really like to get into the city more in the future and take advantage of being here. I know Matt and I will probably spend a weekend there in December but it's so close that there's no reason I couldn't go once every one to two weeks.
4. Going home tomorrow and getting ready for the beach. I am so excited for this vacation, I love a good beach vacation and it's been a while since I've been on one. I am really feeling good about the decision to run the marathon the day after we get back so that my week of laziness will be a taper.

Anyway back to the run. I basically did a variation of the run I've been doing out here for the past several days. It is such a nice one that I feel like until I get sick of it I'll keep doing it - it always feels shorter than it is which is nice, the scenery is pretty, and the roads are pretty quiet (although I did almost get run over twice this morning). I do have to say that some New Jersey drivers are maniacs but you could say that of just about anywhere.

And this is so exciting - for the first time since I've started traveling for work I saw another runner! Woo hoo!

Anyway I ran out for 50:15 this morning, then after I turned around I started a fartlek workout with 1-4 minute segments of hard running (5k/10k pace). Running this pace at sea level is so awesome. I decided to start the workout portion of the run really late because I felt that for the marathon it made more sense and also because it made running back easier if I had something to focus on. I felt pretty good through all the intervals and on the last one minute, I just hammered. I feel that I am regaining some confidence that I kind of lost while I was in my adjusting-to-travel stage. I also think now that I could run a decent 5k or 10k at sea level so maybe after the marathon and some time off I'll try to find a good sea level race.

That is the news for today so far. Now I should actually get some work done so I can get to NYC at a decent time!

Posted by barb at 6:51 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2004

Time off is not a bad thing!

I hate taking days off from running. I especially hate taking days off when I don't do anything else = like a day when I go skiing or hiking or swimming or SOMETHING is OK but when I do absolutely nothing I hate, hate, hate it.

However, you know I feel really bad when I decide to take an unplanned day off, especially the week before I go on a beach vacation where I will probably take several days off! So yesterday I felt THAT BAD. I left work at 6:00, went to Target and bought Benadryl because my mom said it would help, went to the hotel and took two of them, and literally passed out by 7:15. Now part of that was because Benadryl causes drowsiness but also I was really that exhausted.

So when I woke up at 5:15 am today I felt pretty darned good, although my face is somewhat more swollen and revolting than it was yesterday. So I was like, well, I wonder how far I can run this morning. The answer was 15 miles. I am pretty excited about this, it's the longest run I've done in several weeks. It also makes me think that running a marathon shouldn't be that big of a deal for me if running 15 in the morning before work is fine. It was a really nice run and I feel like I'm getting into a good routine here in Jersey. Also, to my great happiness, I found a few little trails!!! Woo hoo!!! Now of course I still ran 14.8 of the 15 miles on the roads but this was a small victory and I hope to have more in the future. Also I feel that I am really getting to know the area, both from running around and driving aimlessly at night occasionally.

Anyway now here is my big dilemma. I am signed up for the Chicago Marathon which is on October 10th. However, everyone that was going to go to Chicago and run the marathon with me is no longer going. So what I'm considering now is running the Boulder Backroads Marathon... which is on September 26th - next Sunday. I know I am not optimally prepared for this race and it will be significantly harder than Chicago, both because it's at altitude and because it's hilly. However, my goal for the marathon this year was just to finish one. So I could accomplish that at Boulder Backroads, have a good time, and not feel bad about hardly doing anything while I'm in Mexico because I am tapering. The more I think about it the more I think it's a good idea. I'll probably think about it for one more day and then sign up tomorrow.

Now back to work...

Posted by barb at 7:09 AM | Comments (4)

September 13, 2004

Weekend Update

Well this was a short weekend but an eventful one.

I have kind of a funny story and I am dying to know if this has ever happened to anyone else, so I will start with that. Yesterday (Sunday), I ran an easy 9 miles. I would have liked to have run 11 but I was really tired due to not getting enough sleep Saturday night. Anyway I was on my way back to Matt's house - I ran from there - and when I had about four minutes left in the run, a bee flew up my nose! I immediately did kind of a farmer's blow maneuver but not before it stung me in the nostril. It would have been really funny if it didn't hurt A LOT. Well okay, it is still really funny. I was kind of freaking out though because we were supposed to go over to Matt's mom's house for lunch - she was the one remaining family member that I hadn't met - and I didn't want to go over there looking like I had gotten punched in the face if it got really swollen. So when I got back I was crying because it hurt so much and because I was so upset that my face was going to swell up and I was going to be hideous but then I couldn't stop laughing because it was so funny and ridiculous!

Obviously Matt already knows I have a screw or two loose but I think this really brought it home :)

Anyway has this (or something similar) ever happened to you? I really want to know.

So luckily my face did not swell up like a balloon although today I feel weird and not so good. I'm not sure if I will be running today or not. My body feels kind of like I have the flu - really sore, and it hurts when I touch anything. I have a big important meeting type thing from one to four this afternoon so when that's over I may go to the hotel and go to bed for a long time.

In other running news from the weekend I went to practice for the first time in a while on Saturday morning where I had a really good tempo workout with the group. It is amazing how much better I feel when I don't start out too fast! That was a good lesson.

Friday I got up early, flew home standby on an 8:05 am flight, and went for a run after I got back. I ran about 8 miles and it felt nice although getting up early to fly home was kind of tiring. Glad I did it though.

This week I'll be here through Thursday and then I will fly home, hopefully get a ton of stuff done on Friday, and then we will be leaving for Puerto Vallarta on Saturday morning! I am very excited about this trip!!

Posted by barb at 7:35 AM | Comments (3)

September 9, 2004

Run with a View

OK so I know it sounds crazy that I love New Jersey. However, this morning I had an experience that validates all my crazy feelings. On Thursdays I normally do my mid-long run (which lately has frankly been my long run, but I digress). This morning I wanted to run for around 2 hours, which I figured would be 13-14 miles. Last night after work I had found a nice road called Hollywood Road that I wanted to run on (after work I ran an easy 3.5 miles) so I set out for there at 5:45 am. I had wanted to get to sleep early last night but instead I watched the Real World Philadelphia, which is so bad. I hadn't watched the Real World for many years until this past weekend when I watched like half the San Diego season. How can something so brainless be so addictive? I wish I knew. At least this weekend I tempered the loss of brain cells by reading The New Yorker but yesterday I just hung out in my bed.

Anyway I ran down Hollywood Road for about 30 minutes and then took a right on Horseback Road (these roads have the cutest names). This road was awesome. Big shoulder, tons of trees, pretty. After I'd run on it for about 15 minutes, I started running uphill. The hill was fairly steep but it is sea level after all so it was no big thing. The uphill lasted about six minutes, after which I ran downhill for several minutes. Then the road just opened up and there was a school where I took a right and ran across a big field. The view was amazing. There was this huge valley and all these trees and it looked like a Norman Rockwell town was across the valley. It's been raining on and off for two days so it was just WET outside and the clouds were hanging over the valley. This was one of the prettiest things I've seen... and I regularly run in some pretty great places back home!

Anyway the rest of the run was fine, I ended up running for 1:57 which I am calling 13 miles (I think this is fairly conservative). Then in the spirit of being in the Northeast I went to Dunkin Donuts (this is one of my favorite place even though I never eat donuts) to get a bagel and coffee.

Thanks Alison and Becky for your comments about my race. I am not upset about it but it definitely helps to hear that this was a reasonable thing. I really hadn't raced in a long time which I didn't think too much about.

I am having all kinds of thoughts about marathons this fall which I may write about later.

Posted by barb at 6:52 AM | Comments (6)

September 8, 2004

Here is the Big Update

I have seriously not written anything in my blog for almost a week. That is so bad. This is going to be a monstrous entry so if you don’t want to read a short novel, be forewarned.

I am going to start with today, Wednesday, and go back chronologically to last Friday, which is the last entry I need to create. Here we go:

Wednesday, September 8th:
The remnants of Hurricane Frances are passing through the northeast today, which means that it is raining like cats and dogs. I really like this weather, it is the kind of weather that makes you want to hang out on the couch with coffee, a blanket, and a good book. Sadly I have to work so it is more like hanging out in my cozy cube with my coffee and my computer. Well that is almost the same.

I am so happy to be back in New Jersey. I know that sound sick and twisted but it is so nice here! I got up at 5:30 this morning, restrained myself from going back to bed for two more hours, and started running very slowly at 5:45. My goal was just to tool around for about 7 miles and then run another 4 miles after work today. I ended up having a good time exploring and ran for 1:22 which I am calling 9 miles. I still plan to run 3-4 miles tonight after work, which should be fine since I got in pretty early today – I believe I was the second person in the room this morning. I found a nice little dirt path for a while although it was so wet outside that it soaked my shoes, which is bad.

Tuesday, September 7th:

Travel day. Left Denver at 7:20 am and arrived at New York LaGuardia at approximately 1:05 pm. SO TIRED. This was my first experience flying into LGA and getting a car and stuff. I was kind of scared about driving through New York, especially since I didn’t really have any directions, but it was fine. I actually thought it was fun going over the bridges. And the drive isn’t much longer than the drive from Newark. The flights are so much better into LGA (and they keep putting me in Economy Plus for one leg of the flight) that I think I’ll keep doing it, at least for the time being.

I left work a little after 6:30 pm and planned to run really slow for one hour. I mean really slow, like I was planning on running 6 miles. However, I found an awesome road and some different places to keep running around, so I ran for 1:08 which I think was almost 8 miles but I am calling 7.5 for compulsive mileage tracking purposes. I love running in New Jersey!! I still want to find more dirt trails to run on but this was really nice. There are some very pretty areas here, I especially like this town nearby called Lincoln Park, which seems like the best place to run so far.

Monday, September 6th:

Labor Day, Colorado Run 10k. I had no idea as to how this would go, but I wasn’t optimistic. My goal was to run faster than 45:00 for the 10k, which would have been a walk in the park a month ago but now is hard. As I said yesterday I have reconciled myself to the fact that I am not as fast as I was and as long as I’m traveling I will probably continue to be slower than I would like. That is kind of depressing but it is what it is. Anyway, I digress. I warmed up for about 20 minutes and wandered over to the start for the 10k, chatted with a few RRB people, and we were off on an interesting course. First we ran around the CSU oval 2.5 times, then we did 4 laps of a criterion which was a little over a mile per lap. This was fine, it was pretty flat and the only thing that really slowed us down was a hairpin turn at the end of the criterion which we did four times. I started out with a 6:40 and every mile thereafter was over 7:00 pace, but not by too much. I didn’t feel bad or anything, just slow, but managed to beat a lot of people I started out with and finished pretty strong – I don’t know if the course was marked correctly but if it was my last quarter mile was a 78! Somehow I don’t think that it was.

The best thing about this race was my cheering section. We had gone up to Fort Collins, where M.’s family lives, for dinner the night before and stayed over. M.’s dad, stepmom, step-grandma, her husband, and his little seven year old cousin all came to watch my race (along with M. and our other friend Matt who ran the 5k). That was so incredibly nice of them and it was great to hear people cheering for me every time I passed through the oval!

Anyway after the race I cooled down with a few guys from RRB and we went to lunch with some friends and then drove down to my dad’s house to have dinner for my stepmom’s birthday. The driving all day got to be a bit much but it was a lot of fun to have so much family time!

Sunday, September 5th:

You see I said this would be a novel. Not much to say about Sunday, I am going to try to keep this kind of short. Easy 4 mile run to shake out before the race. Nice morning, a little windy but a pretty day.

Saturday, September 4th:

This was also kind of a boring run. I ran about 6 miles (this was seriously all I had time for) before taking a quick shower and heading up to Boulder to tailgate for the CU-CSU game. It was such a fun day and a very exciting game, CU won 27-24 and it went down to the last second. College football is so much fun. I have become an honorary CU fan since I moved back home because Bowdoin, where I went to school, has a very bad Division III football team. Since everyone I hang out with in Denver went to CU it’s a lot of fun to root for them.

In odd news I saw my ex-fiancé at the tailgate but avoided him completely. It is one of those situations where I just kind of wish he would disappear off the face of the planet. Sadly I don’t think that will happen, so I will continue to avoid him. Luckily the football games is probably the only place I’ll ever run into him.

Friday, September 3rd:

I want to write so much about this but I have already been writing for what seems like an hour. I will briefly say that this run was the most fun I’ve had running in a month or two. I ran 10 miles on the Mesa Trail in Boulder. It was amazing and it was an experience that really brought me back to experiencing true joy in my running. I was running because it was fun, not because I was training. This made me so happy.

I also somehow tripped over rocks twice and have some pretty hard core wounds to show for my run which I am proud of. I may write some more about this run in future entries but I will just say for now that it was great.

If you’ve actually made it this far, I am really impressed! More tomorrow.

Posted by barb at 8:13 AM | Comments (2)

September 7, 2004

Brief Update

I don't have much time right now but I want to write a brief update on my race. It was fun, albeit not terribly well-organized, and I ran 44:03 for 10k and I believe I was the 10th female finisher. I am troubled by my slowness but I've come to a few realizations -traveling every week is hard on my body, I need to quit boozing, I am never going to be in the Olympics so some things are more important than running well.

However, that said, the race was really fun! I had a sizable cheering section - M., one of our friends, and M.'s family! Fort Collins is a really nice town and it was fun to spend some time up there (more on that later).

I will write a big long entry hopefully tonight - but for now I need to check on Alison's race!

Posted by barb at 12:53 PM | Comments (1)

September 2, 2004

Get me out of Dallas

I hate Dallas more than any place I have ever been. Thank God I think I only have about 9 more hours in this awful place. I honestly think that if I had to come here every week I would quit my job. I also hate this crappy hotel I've been staying in (in which I was locked out of my room at 7:30 this morning for some reason which made me late to work). I will never stay at this hotel again. In fact if I never came back to Dallas I would be really happy.

That said, I had a pretty decent 13 mile run this morning in Grapevine, TX (home of several wineries which I think is kind of hilarious). I ran for about an hour and 58 minutes, so I think it was over 13 miles but I'll call it 13 just to be conservative. I am so sick of running on pavement, I am really really really excited to go on a trail run tomorrow. Here are some pictures of a trail right near where I'll be running tomorrow - can't find any for the actual trail I'll be running - but this one, Gregory Canyon, is one of my favorites.

Since I'm racing on Monday, I'll probably run 7-10 miles on the Mesa Trail tomorrow, 7 miles or so on Saturday, and an easy 4 miles with some strides on Sunday. That should give me around 54 miles for the week which seems really low but I am okay with it.

I may write more later/tomorrow. Until then I am just thinking happy going-home thoughts.

Posted by barb at 8:10 AM | Comments (5)

September 1, 2004

There are places to run in Texas!

Wow, this is great. After work yesterday I did a little exploring and found an area near Dallas which is actually a nice place to run! So this morning I woke up 30 minutes late (whoops) and went to Grapevine, Texas with a girl from work. There is a big lake there, Grapevine Lake, with some quiet roads where a person can run without fear of getting run over. I was supposed to do a workout with several different interval distances which I didn't do, but I did 8 by approximately 1:00 (1:09 to 1:02 on a loop) with one loop easy in between. I tried to make my legs hurt as much as possible, in a good way, just to build up a little bit of lactic acid. The run was about 7 miles total, which was fine, but I may attempt a 3-4 mile run this evening as well. Tomorrow morning I'm going back to the same place (hopefully getting up around 5:00) for a longer run. And then tomorrow evening I get to go home! Woo hoo!!

Last night we went to a really nice dinner at a steakhouse near downtown Dallas, which was great. Since I've been feeling anemic lately I of course had to get a steak. It was awesome. The area (I think it was called Highland Park) actually seemed pretty cool and I am thinking much happier thoughts about Dallas now although I could still never live here. I think some of us are supposed to take customers to dinner tonight as well but I'm hoping I don't need to go, I am sleepy! Overall this has been a pretty fun week but I'll be really happy to go home.

I am going to lunch with a friend on Friday, but I'm considering driving up to Boulder kind of early and running the Mesa Trail. I haven't done a good trail run in a while (and Alison's weekend on the trails in NH has certainly been inspiring!) and I think it might help me feel a little more excited about running again.

Posted by barb at 7:52 AM | Comments (0)