Slow and Steady Right?

Today was a tough day of tilting at windmills and I knew I needed to run as badly as I wanted to just skip it.

I let myself be very slow.  It was hot, humid, and windy threatening a storm.  We had about 6 sprinkles but no rain.  The wind was helpful, but the humidity was killer.

When I got home I did The Runner's Core workout level 1.  It took about 10 minutes, and I couldn't complete all of it.  Planks for days, but situps will stop me in my tracks every time.  And my balance ball was more inflated than theirs so it was pretty funny - my husband had to help balance me.

Bogart the Amazon spent the entire time giving the yoga mat the hairy eyeball.  He really didn't like that thing, and was growling at it when I was doing planks.  Mark had to reassure him I was ok and was not being eaten by the blue thing.

Then I brought in the balance ball and BD immediately went "tall bird" and felt that he needed to protect me from the awful thing.  I don't blame him - I might have needed protection.

I have no doubt that I am going to feel this workout in the morning.  I am going to try to do core at least 3x a week - either after runs or on nights I am not running is still up in the air.

Yeah, OK, I'm not dead

Or injured.  Or anything that might be a good reason not to be running and blogging.

I ran tonight - not a bad run but not great.  I'm officially on plan.

I downloaded the Hal Higdon's 1/2 Marathon Novice 1 Training Program.  It fought with me on wanting to start today, not next Monday.  But I won.  It works well, and I hope it will make keeping up with my runs a little easier since I don't want the calendar on the fridge while we are trying to sell the house.  It does not, however, sync with Garmin or Daily Mile so I will keep using my Garmin too.  Considering how reliable my iPhone has been with run apps in the past and the GPS data, this is probably a good idea.  Garmin won't cheat me out of that last .20 like the iPhone does.

Let me tell you, if you held Hal at gunpoint I don't think he could sound less enthusiastic than he does in this app.  I'm can't find where to turn off his "cheers" but they made me kind of laugh anyway.  I never knew "You're doing great" could be a dirge.  Anybody remember the old Clear Eyes commercials with Ben Stein - yeah, like that.

I discovered if you loosen the laces on your stability shoes too much, your legs ache and feel like lead.  I tightened them back up and the last mile was so much better.  I also discovered that if you run 7 miles in a week for the first time in months, you might experience some delayed onset muscle soreness.  Yeah, I thought I might be immune or something.....

I've missed running.  It feels very daunting to look at 7 miles last week and think that I want to be able to run 13.1 all at once again when this is over.  But I guess we will go back to baby steps.  One of these days I will be a continuous runner and stop the cycle.

My goal is to run the Covered Bridges Half in New Hampshire on Labor Day weekend.  Wish me luck!!