hello world.

long time no see!

so do you all remember when i said i could feel something new and exciting on the horizon? we'll i could have never guessed how new and exciting it would truly be! no, i'm not getting married and not i am not pregnant. (it's much bigger than that!) however, you all will just have to sit tight until i announce what it is. i hope it's worth the wait!

and just so you know, i am not bringing up the fact that there is new and exciting news to drive you all nuts.. it's my excuse for being so busy lately! i'm not going to have the time to blog like i use to, but i will post once a week to keep whoever is interesting in what i have to say up to date on my training!

5.6.08

3 miles (no walking.. a FIRST for me!!!) + workout

5.7.08

3 miles (no walking)  + workout

5.8.08

3 miles (no walking) + workout

5.10.08

ok.. this run deserves a backstory.

aj and i are running 4 days a week on our training.. tuesday, wednesday and thursdays during the week, then a long run on saturday. the first long run on our first saturday of the new training program was 6 miles. neither of us have ran that far since we've started training and we were very excited and nervous all week long. or at least i was. for me, i was so excited to finish the run and hear the man in my ipod say, "congratulations, you have completed 6 miles. this is your new distance record."

well, with that said, saturday morning rolls around and aj and i drove to a bike/jogging path here in town. we park, get ourselves situated and take off. aj quickly disappears ahead of me (i am REALLY slow) and i start zoning out and get into the grove of my run. one crappy song comes on after another and i decided i needed to skip songs until i got to a good one. i hit the buttons on my armband and once i found a good one i wanted to know how far i'd gone so far and continued to hit random buttons. (i couldn't remember which button did what!) then, before i knew it, the man in my ipod said, "workout ended." i screamed a few profanities and got so upset i almost threw in the towel. the man in my ipod said i had run 2.75 miles so i decided i'd just punch in a 3.25 mile run and be on my way.

yeah, good idea until i realized i wouldn't know for sure where the halfway point was. you see, the trail we were running on goes clear into the next town, then attaches to a few other paths that extend all throughout southwest ohio. our plan was to run until we were alerted we had reached our half way point, then run back to the car. i figured sooner or later aj would be running back towards me and i could let him know what happened and he might be able to tell me where to turn around.

another mile passes and aj is finally in my sight. i yell to him as we pass that my ipod got screwed up and he told me to turn around at the gate. yes! a solid point to turn around! i was so relieved, but then i look down the straight path to see no gate. i saw two bridges and just assumed that was what he meant. but what if it wasn't? i was so confused and frustrated that i continued on to the furthest bridge then turned around there.

then man in my ipod started counting down the meters until i was finished. i knew he was wrong. i knew i had much further to run. "3.25 miles completed," he said. i kept running. "4 miles completed." still i kept running. then i saw aj coming back towards me again. he got by my said and started running with me. run to the road, thats the end! i kept pushing, but finally i gave out, just meters from where "the end" was.

apparently aj had been done for about 20 minutes and started to worry about me. "when did you turn around?" he asked. i told him i kept running until the second bridge and he told me i should have just turned around when we passed. good to know now! i didn't care. i just hoped i had gone the 6 miles or else i knew i'd be really upset.

we added the distance from the two runs and found i had met the required amount of milage for that day. and some. i had ran almost 7.25 miles! wowzers! i had never ran over 4 miles, and here i am running well over 7 miles and only walking less than a minute of that! (just when i had to stop for traffic and the other time i just thought i was going to die.)

so, here are the TWO graphs from that saturday. i promise i wont be such a dumb ass next time and will do the whole thing in one shot!