I'm Back!

Whoa! I feel like I've sat down to relax in a while. Is it really only Wednesday?

Backing up to Saturday, I had a great long run. I drove to the half marathon course I ran in Quesnel last year. The course has a 15 km loop, with a little out and back portion to start and finish the race. I ran the loop part, plus an out and back km for a 17km run. I chose to run this route because I hadn't run in that area since the half marathon last year and I wanted to change things up from my usual route, and because I thought it would be good to run the route of my first half before running my second half on May 2nd.

I did some good reflecting on the run. I remembered the points where I felt tired, the points where I passed by water stations without stopping when I should have, the beginning of the race where I was going way too slowly, and the end when I realized I could really pick up my pace and still finish within my goal time. I thought about the "training" I had done for that race, and how much more prepared I feel for this upcoming one. There was a beautiful, blue sky, hardly any wind, I had good music on my iPod and I ran at a good, consistent pace. A good, solid run.

After the run on Saturday, I came home to do some cleaning up and took a little nap before heading over to a friend's place for dinner and board games. Maybe I should revise that to a good, solid Saturday!

Back to work on Sunday! A coworker and I drove over 700 kms over the course of the day picking up luggage of the youth in the program I work for and dropping it off at the camp we were holding Monday-Wednesday. (Yes, I do have a very interesting job!) These youth don't understand the meaning of "packing light." I've decided Sunday was my cross-training workout for the week.

Monday morning I got up early to fit in a 5 km run before leaving for camp. I had hoped to be able to go out for a run with a couple of the youth while at the camp, partly to get a break, and partly because we have some really good runners and they could push me to up my pace since I always run alone. Unfortunately, due to low temperatures over the past week, the camp didn't have its water up and running so showering wasn't an option. Not only did I want to run without showering, but I also didn't want the participants to run without showering as they all had to board flights on Wednesday to travel across the country and I didn't want to be responsible for making the program known for its stinky youth! We were hauling water from the lake to do dishes and flush the toilets. (More cross training?)

The last of the youth were picked up this morning at 4 am, so needless to say, I'm rather exhausted today. I had plans to run THE HILL, but am opting to run a different hill when I visit the new group in Williams Lake tomorrow, when I'm up for a better quality workout. I'll be able to do another run on Friday and can still fit my 4 runs for the week in with another long run on Saturday/Sunday.