Running Chick

Another week in the bag. This one’s my longest so far, 18 miles total.

This morning was my long run of 10 miles. I got up at the wee hours of 0600, got my crap together to head out only to discover that my Garmin wouldn’t turn on. It’s been giving me sporadic problems over the last few weeks, and I’ve been forced to do hard resets on it to bring it back to life. This time, when I did a hard reset, I also found that the battery was drained, which was impossible since I had it on the charger all night.  Uh oh. I put it on the charger and sat around twiddling my thumbs for the 45 minutes it took to get two hours worth of run time on it and then I took off. I love my 305 and I’m sad to think about replacing it, but I suppose it’s time. According to my logs, it has 250 hours of use on it, and that’s only the stuff I’ve tracked. I’m sure it’s higher. If only the Garmin 610’s weren’t so dang expensive right now. Meh.

Back to those 10 miles. They were just okay. I’m finding that I’m struggling with the longer distances. It’s not my endurance that gives out, it’s my legs. They start hurting around mile five and they get progressively tighter and more sore the longer I go. There’s only so long that I can ignore quads that feel like they’re on fire before I have to stop and walk and stretch. I don’t really know what to do about it either. Add some weight training? Add more hills? Run more? Run my long runs slower? Seriously, no clue. Maybe I need a coach.

Anyway, around mile 8, I met up with Josh who was doing his long run of 6 miles and we ran the last two together, finishing up in the waterfront park.  Oh, and I ended up with a blister the size of Texas on the ball of my left foot. I hardly ever get blisters and I was wearing my extra good socks. Hrmph.

Weekly wrap-up comin’ at ya. Tuesday 4.03 @ 9:53 (gah, the wind!); Thursday 4.11 @ 9:57; Saturday 10.07 @ 10:49, for a total of 18.21 miles @ 10:25. Next week is 3 @ 4, but I’m contemplating joining Josh for his 7 miler on Saturday.

I would like to officially thank Miz Scout for warming up my heart rate monitor strap this morning.

Size check. Scout & Pippen are now the same weight – 10 lbs. He’s all muscle. She’s … not.

Hey, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Our post-long run tradition is to hit up the DT for lunch and beers and since it was so nice outside (70s!) we walked down to the KBC for some additional post-run fuel.

I couldn’t bear to have them put green dye in my beloved Scotch Ale, so I kept it as-is. Maybe we will resume our quest for green beer later tonight.