193 Days Left

Today is Sunday.  Today was supposed to be a running day.  My alarm went off at 5:30am.  I turned that thing right off and went back to bed.  As I may have mentioned last time, it's still dark at 5:30am in Virginia.  I may have also mentioned that we just moved.  I may not have mentioned that I have spent the last 2 days cleaning my dirty house.....I even scrubbed all of my tile floors Cinderella-style.  (I got practice being a princess - my friend Allison called it cross-training in preparation for the race.)  Today, when my alarm went off at running time, I was tired and sore and I didn't want to go, so I didn't.  I felt bad about it once I woke up again.

BUT!  The guilt was short lived because today is the first day of vacation!!  Our family repacked some of the stuff into the car and headed an hour south to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for our annual beach week.  Once we unpacked, played on the beach, went out to dinner, and went to play putt-putt, I remembered that fellow princess, Elizabeth, stuck with her training during her vacation to St. Something.  (St. John, but I kept saying she was in St. Thomas.  She was nice enough not to point out my constant mistake.)   If she could do it in paradise, I could do it at my beach, so I put my kids into bed, threw on my running clothes, laced up my shoes, rolled on the Body Glide, and headed out the door.

The wonderful thing about the Outer Banks is that every half mile is marked along the way.  Our cottage is at mile post (MP) 17.5.  I needed to do a 3 mile long run today, so I walked up the street, turned left at the end and ran a mile and a half to MP 19 and then turned around and came back.  The first mile was pretty easy.  I felt good.  When I got to a mile and a half and turned around, my knee started to ache a little during the running intervals.  I was also a little concerned about my dinner (which was sitting in my stomach) making a reappearance.  But I kept going.  My Prince Charming met me at the end of the run so we could walk the dog for my cool down walk.

It wasn't easy today.  I tried to talk myself out of it, promising that would get up and go tomorrow.  I could think of a million reasons to just put it off until another day or just skipping it all together and picking back up on Tuesday.  But, at the end of the day, I found the will to do it.  There are probably going to be lots of days when it's cold or rainy or I'm tired or sick or I just don't want to.  Those are the days when I'm going to have to put on the big girl running shoes and just do it.

Today's stats:
3.1 miles in 39.45 (12.7 minute mile)