Life, training and Oops 22.4......

Well, I finally signed into my blog after a bit of a hiatus here....Sometimes we need a break if we can't keep up with everything else in life and I think that's OK:)

Life ramblings:

I was back to work full time this week which is only 4 days but long ones. The county fair was in town which meant I went pretty much directly from work to the fair every evening. This is such a big deal around here. Everything you would imagine a podunk County Fair to be. My girls pretty much take off on their own but Max needs someone over 48 inches for the rides so I had to swallow it up and ride the Ball of fire, the Zipper, the Sizzler. I HATE spinny rides. I love rollercoasters etc. but post children I CANNOT handle this spinny shit. I felt so nauseous after the Sizzler that I literally had to stand bent over with my head between my knees. Oh-the things I do for my child....

One of my duties as a hockey parent includes flipping burgers at the arena stand at the fair. It is really a lot of fun to flip burgers over a hot grill when it is already 105 degrees outside. I was SO hot and greasy and disgusting!!!! We're supposed to butter the buns and then put them on the grill (heart attack??) so after about an hour I stopped buttering them and just started wiping them across my forehead.

Max won a Goldfish on one of the games. I had been held up for the THOUSANDTH time by bumping into someone I knew and chatting away (this is hard in a small town, I know everyone and I like to talk) Joe took Max and Reese over to play this ping pong Goldfish game while I yapped. By the time I made it over Max was holding this fish in a bag of water with the biggest smile on his face! I got a big smile on my face too until Reese piped up that Joe had spent $50 to win this fish. FIFTY freakin' dollars-ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! I tell you, I spent the rest of the night prying the diamonds out of my wedding ring to go in the bottom of the fishbowl....How does my son rate here!!! I wanted Joe to buy me a bottle of water and it was $3 so he thought I could probably wait until we got home....

Weather has been absolutely CRAZY this week. Record high temps and humidity early in the week which made for a sweltering hot house. We don't have AC and I actually considered sleeping in an ice bath one night. This morning 57 degrees-GO FIGURE!! Only in Minnesota!

Yesterday I headed to the Northwest Angle which is just a gorgeous part of MN with my two best friends. Last minute plan but it worked since Joe was not traveling! We stayed overnight and spent most of the night gabbing and drinking wine. Actually, I was NOT drinking wine, just kinda pretending to drink wine....Easier than making a scene to my non running friends about how not only do I have to leave early in the morning to run but now I'm not going to participate in the wine drinking.....the things we do for our sport..... Honestly I really WANTED to drink wine-a lot of it! Anyway, I had a wonderful time.

Do you ever "fake" drink because of running or am I the only 35 year old coward here-ha!

Training:

So, I just completed week 3 of my marathon training plan. I finally feel like my legs are coming around and my confidence is climbing a bit. SO much better than last week both mentally and physically. Just over 71 miles (not what I planned for) and some good quality workouts in some DEATHLY heat and humidity (even at 5am when I run). Thank God we are finally cooling down around here!! Hitting paces (other than MP) is sometimes a challenge for me and I struggled through a hill workout on Friday but I'm managing to do OK here and I'm feeling good:)

Headed out on my long run this morning after sneaking home from the cabin by 5 am. My husband joined me. We almost NEVER run together. We are both pigheaded and do much better on our own-ha! Once I started running I couldn't even remember exactly what my plan said I was supposed to do (somewhere around 13 miles with some MP intervals) Frankly, I didn't care. The long run is generally my favorite run of the week and sometimes after following this structure all week I just want to RUN even if it means breaking away from my plan and doing my own thing. Now, I really DO plan to stick to my plan this time around and not CONSTANTLY do my own thing but I think I will be a little flexible with the long run. The route we took has options for 12, 14, 16, 18 miles or a complete loop of 22.4. Joe doesn't follow a plan so he was game for whatever although his longest run in almost a year has been only 13 miles. I anticipated we would run about 16 (funny though how when I went to throw out water bottles prior to the run, I snuck one at mile 18 of the loop....) Gorgeous weather-the humidity still at 93% but only 57 degrees which felt so AWESOME and truly made a huge difference in my pace vs. effort. I knew by mile 15 that we were going the whole loop. Just one of those days and I capitalized on it whether it was stupid or not.

SO-that's all my news. I'm back to only 2 days of work this week so hopefully I will have a little more free time. I still plan to get out my answers to the Q and A post but a little behind here:)

Some big races this weekend. IM Lake Placid today, a couple of HM's and I'm sure many others! So excited to see how they go!!