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Monday, May 9, 2016

A Faster Gear

It's been a busy week.

Last Monday, I had dinner with my old friend, Brittany. She's not that old, our friendship dates back to the good ole days of childhood though. It's always great catching up and getting her perspective on this thing called life. Britt, is one of my biggest motivators and supporters and her gentle advice helped to pull me out of my last depression. I love you, Britt!

Last Tuesday, I received my first Remicade infusion, so I worked late throughout the week to make up lost time so that I wouldn't have to use vacation time. After working a few nine hour days last week, I wondered how I survived 12 hour work days when I worked at Mazda. I only managed to get in one four mile run during the week, but I kicked ass and averaged an 11:07 minute per mile pace. That's about the pace I was running before my surgery! Hell yeah!

Friday night, my friend, Veronica, from Texas arrived around 11pm. Normally, I would be fast asleep at that time. Especially, considering I planned to wake up at 6:15am to start my 6 mile run before the sun had a chance to heat things up. I didn't go to bed until around 1am, but I didn't let lack of sleep be an excuse to push back my 6 mile training run. When I started my 6 mile run, I felt my body kick into a faster gear. After two miles, my sister, Kim, joined me on rollerblades to keep me company. I told her I may have went out too fast in the beginning and I might start slowing down, but I was able to maintain that faster gear until mile 5 when I slowed down only to find the faster gear again for mile 6. I ran 6 miles in one hour and five minutes! My average pace was 10:51 minutes per mile.  I didn't take any walk breaks and every other mile I took a quick 10-15 second break to hydrate. It felt amazing! In fact, I'm still on a runner's high from it. How the heck do I get faster the farther I run?

I went to the MarathonFest info session at Track Shack to learn more about the training program. I was able to talk one on one with the program director. I showed her my split times for my six mile run and she told me that would place me in the 4:30-4:45 pace group, which is a 9:45-11:00 minutes per mile. I didn't realize I was that fast. I registered for MarathonFest. It starts the beginning of June and I'm hoping I'll be able to train to finish NYC in less than 5 hours. PR, here I come!

I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with Veronica, her mom, my sisters, and my mom. I made breakfast for everyone on Mother's day, which is a huge feat for me. I wanted to quit, but I managed to finish the pancakes and bacon. We also went to Sak comedy for Mother's Day. It takes a lot out of me to be that social for that lengh of time. It's been fun to visit with them; however, I am in dire need for a long nap.

Next time, I'll blog about work gossip. (this is my reminder)