Brown??

Saturday afternoon, while mourning a Buckeye loss to Purdue, I decided that I was done with the cute blue sparkly polish that had been gracing my toes since the beginning of the season.  (Yes...I'm aware that blue was not the best of choices for my Buckeyes, but it was a really cute shade and I didn't think it would last as long as it did!)  We were hanging at a friend's house, so I asked if they had some nail polish remover that I could borrow.  As I slowly turned my fingers slightly blue with removed polish, I noticed something interesting...

There was brown under those big toenails!!!  I was so excited that I shared it with everyone who would listen.  Reactions: silence, confusion, worry, pride, happiness.  A weird gamut, yes?  The first three were from non-distance runners; the last two were from my runner friends.  As they know, the brown/black toenail is something that only runners get.  Knowing this, I was absolutely beside myself!  All the disgruntled feelings of slowness, of newness, of not really getting this were wiped away in two half brown toes.  I was ready to start on the next week of training!!!

Now, while I am excited by new level of runner-hood, I do plan on covering that brown up with a cute layer of SCARLET polish to finish out the Buckeye season!!! 

Why Do I Bother?

This week's training sessions saw some interesting ups and downs. 

After four days of 2 mile run sessions, Wednesday dawned as a welcome day off.  But, as Alexa loves to race in the morning, we took off running across the blacktop to Samantha's school.  And that's where I learned my lesson in proper running footwear.  Evidently, ankle boots are not the way to go.  I came down funny on my left foot, overcompensated to the right, and ended up on the blacktop with a skinned knee, a skinned elbow, and a slightly twisted ankle.  I was so glad that Wednesday was a planned day off.

I aborted the run planned for Thursday because of the pain in my foot/ankle and went for a nice, slow walk with Hailey instead.  I was concerned with Friday but thought I would just take it slow.  I was still aiming for Saturday as a 2 1/2 mile run to push myself a little further this week.  Like I said, why do I bother?

1 1/2 miles into the run, I felt good and my foot wasn't bothering me at all.  I was definitely going slower than usual but I was having a hard time judging because I wasn't on my usual track.  I was at a 12 laps to a mile track instead and my lap times were totally different.  So, I decided to aim for 3 miles instead.  And, once I hit 3, I couldn't just leave it there.  So, I finished off another quarter mile at a much faster pace (about 12min/mile pace).  And, as I was leaving the gym, I thought to myself, I so could have gone further at that slower pace.  I ended up running a little over 53 minutes, which is pretty close to that 60 minute goal.

So, new goal again?  Not really..I still have two goals for November that I haven't yet really hit.  The first is to run continuously for 60 minutes.  Most likely, I will hit that on Tuesday with my long run.  The second....to get my average steady mile pace down to 14:00.  With my new training schedule courtesy of Josh (thanks!), I am absolutely confident that I will hit that before Thanksgiving!

(On a housekeeping note, I have changed the settings so all of you who don't want google accounts can now post onto the blog....)