Reunited and it feels so good...

Sorta...

Saturday morning my alarm went off at 5:45. I slowly got myself out of bed. I found my running pants, got my sports bra on, strapped on my heart rate monitor, located my one technical shirt, threw my hair back in a ponytail, put on my under armor running socks, and went into the kitchen.

It's weird how a routine and gear can feel like getting reacquainted with an old friend you haven't seen in a while. For two months every Saturday started this way. It was completed by having a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of soymilk.

After the Vancouver Half I took a week off of working out. My body appreciated it, and I continued to lose weight. The problem was, not working out was starting to become too easy. One week turned into two, and then three... I went on the occasional three mile social run, but nothing I would consider training.

Saturday was going to be my first long run with Chris. And I knew it was going to kick my ass. We were planning to run 6 (or 7 miles). Which is twice what I had run at any one time in the past month. To make matters worse, rather than eating a healthy dinner and going to bed early (like I did for my two months I was training), I decided to go out for dinner and have a glass of wine... and three jack and diet cokes.


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Back to Saturday morning... Chris woke up with a stomach bug :( I knew this was going to make it easier for me to wuss out on my run... but instead I went anyway. I decided to run along the Burke-Gilman. I knew it was three miles out to the water fountain.

Mile 1-2:
Were awesome! I was somewhere around 10.5 minutes a mile for the first two and the felt great. I've totally missed this!

Mile 3:
It's funny how quickly running goes from being enjoyable to pretty uncomfortable in a matter of a couple steps. It's hot out and I got a pretty bad cramp and felt my breakfast starting to come up, and I was ready to turn around, but I hadn't even made it to the water fountain yet... Then I looked down right as I was stepping on the marker for three miles. I knew the water fountain wasn't far, so I kept going.

Mile 4:
I spent this entire mile looking for the mile 2 mile marker I had seen on the way out. This sucks.

Mile 5:
When you run out and back you get to cross paths with some of the same people. I see a man approaching slowly, he's walking... and carrying a cup of coffee in his hand.

Mmmm... coffee, I look down at my monitor to see how many minutes I have to keep this up before I can be smug walking around with my cup of coffee... dang it, probably 20 minutes yet!

Mile 6:
I'm so close I can smell it! I'm ready for this to be over with... and it is!

I spent a good 20 minutes stretching at my truck, and it felt so great! All of it, so great! Even the agony (haha, I can be so dramatic!) during the run seems all worth it now that it's over.

I missed this!

I felt so great after my run, I go home and sign up for a couple other fun runs and races I'm planning to do: the Fremont 5K, the Seafair Half Marathon, the 4 mile run at the Redhook Brewery... and the Portland Marathon.

Here we go!