Saturday Morning Runs

I remembered what is was that I hated most about marathon training...Saturday morning runs. The idea of not only waking up at an unacceptable weekend hour, but then having to eat breakfast right away, and then head out for a run is just the last thing you want to have looming over you every week.

My sister was in town this weekend so she joined me on the 7 miler Saturday. Susan also joined the fun, which was quite nice to have not one but two support staff as I like to call my running partners. The problem was, support staff do not make the prospect of a Saturday morning long run any less stomach sickening. I woke up to the 5:30am alarm and my stomach was turning just knowing that I needed to get up an eat. I have issues making myself eat breakfast on a good day, I'm just not that hungry right when I wake up, but when you have to go run 7 miles, you better get something in your stomach, and fast because when you need to get the run over before the heat gets to full force you don't have all that much time to spare.

After forcing some cream of wheat into my body, we headed down to the greenway. I do have to say that the greenway is the one saving grace of long runs. There is something mentally more palatable by thinking 'I need to run 3.5 miles out and then 3.5 miles back', rather than thinking 'I need to run 7 miles'. This comes in especially handy when you are in the double digit Saturday runs.

We did in fact finish the run, quite comfortably, right at an 11 minute mile pace, which is pretty much par for the course for Brandy and I. Afterwards we walked a bit to cool down and drink some water, stopped by Starbucks (which is right beside the greenway) for an iced coffee and I headed off for a training at church, while Brandy finished up some grad school work. The rest of the weekend was filled with glorious scrapbooking, including our first 'for hire' book. Susan had us crop her and Brian's engagement trip to France, which was VERY FUN! We also finished all my California pictures, which means Brandy and I are both 'caught up' in scrapbooking time.

Today I cleaned up after our mess (which generally has little chance of being cleaned up while we are cropping), found we have two leaks in our laundry room, had Sandor start on fixing the leak in the bathroom, and am now headed for bed. Only 5 more days until another Saturday morning run, though, which really makes a Tuesday morning look a whole lot better. I guess everything has it's perks, right?