House of Pain

I ran a nice 14.8 miles today. Wait, back up. Let's tell the whole story. I ran my first 7.3 miles on the way to cross training. I had to hurry a little bit. Ran it in 1 hour 3 mins, so a pace of 8:41. Not bad considering mile 7 was all hill, up hill that is. I held a very relaxed 8:30 for the first 6 miles. Yeah, I tanked the last mile. But the point is that I ran even splits. What's that you want to see my splits? Well you can't I'm married. OK, don't beg it's a little pathetic.
1st mile - 8:20 (as usual I had to make myself slow down to hold this pace. I am such a 5K runner. 3.1 miles push hard over and done. What's not to love?)
2nd mile - 8:29
3rd mile - 8:34
4th mile - 8:30
5th mile - 8:31
6th mile - 8:33
7th mile - 9:30 (think hill...that's my excuse or that I haven't been logging the miles in to do better. Yeah I like the hill excuse better.)
last .30 - 9:07

Not my best pace, but my most even splits. This is big for me.

Then I had a nice (can I say nice to describe The House of Pain?)time cross-training. Does that make me a sick-o? Not in a leather and bull whip sort of way... In a "my muscles are breaking down and rebuilding in a beautiful new tone" sort of way. But I digress. The House of Pain is what we call my track coaches cross-training. Today was an hour of tri-ceps. Then ran the rack, which means I start with 25 lbs (Kim 'the rock' started with 30 lbs) and go until failure. After failure I move to the other arm and then down to the next weight, which is 20 lbs for me. I was able to do 25 reps of each until 10 lbs and 5 lbs then it was 50 reps (which is the stopping point because the next person is waiting). It was great! At the very end my coach (with a little gleam of evil in her eye) had us do "the ladder" of push-ups. How hard can that be, you wonder? Well, let me lay it on you. You start in plank and you stay in plank until it's your turn to do push-ups. When you are done with your push-ups you return to plank. We did 1-2-3-4-5-5-4-3-2-1. Which means the first person does 1 push-up, then the next person does 1 push-up and so on until you return to the first person. The first person then does 2 push-ups and then the next person does 2 and so on and so forth it goes. Remember you are supposed to be in plank when not actively doing your push-ups. If you drop out of plank you start over. (although she was nice and let us do downward facing dog if we couldn't hold plank) It was very hard to do and I had to revert to DFD for most of it. Oh well, there is always next time.

After the House of Pain , I had to run home. Literally. I ran to House of Pain from my house so I had to run home. Christina, aka 'coach,' or 'evil sadistic one,' and Kim said they would run 3 miles with me. Crap, there goes my easy slow run on the way home. Good-bye 9:30 pace….hello work my tush off and still trail behind pace. My splits:
Mile 1 - 8:42
Mile 2 - 8:10
Mile 3 - 8:43
Finally with the mutant running-robots gone I could tuck my tail and run slowly. They headed back for the rest of their easy run and I trudged forward for another slow mile at 9:19. Ugh! At this point I was so freaking thirsty I couldn’t even spit.

I think I’m a freak who drinks more than everyone else. I woke up and drank 10 oz of water. I was well-hydrated yesterday and I drank at least 9-16 oz glasses of water or Ultima. Sure I only peed 4 times yesterday, but I almost always pee only 4 times a day. Five or 6 if, and only if, I drink a lot of tea. What’s that? Stop taking about pee? Oh, OK.

Back to today. I then drank 2-8 oz of my accelerade and then 4-8oz of water during my cross training workout. Then 2 more 8 oz of water on the run back. When I finally dragged my slow, sorry butt home I drank 3-16 oz of Gatorade and 1-16 oz of Ultima. [warning: pee talk is about to resume. For those of you annoyed with the pee talk skip the rest of this paragraph.] I have been drinking water all day and yes, I have peed 2 times. Well, once before I left for my run and once about 2 hours ago. Uh, maybe a little thirsty you think?

(Welcome back, anti pee-talk people!) Back to the rest of my run. It sucked! I almost made hubby come pick me up. I had two asthma attacks and couldn’t (or didn’t want to) hold a decent pace. So I will not post the times, as I am ashamed. Not because of the pace, but because I had to hike some of it. At least I kept going, right? So my total for today is 14.80 miles. It felt good! Again, not in a leather and bull whip sort of way... well, maybe... a little...or so I’ve read.