She's Back!

Did you miss me? I didn't make a huge deal of it on blogger (didn't seem like a great idea to announce to the entire internet that we were going to be gone), but we've gone to and returned from Puerto Vallarta since my last post. Where, among other things, we celebrated our 21st anniversary.

And the kids have gone to and are currently en route to home from their trip to New Orleans. Where they spent four long grueling days of labor to rebuild houses. I'll save any other details from both of those trips for another post. This one will be devoted to running.

On Tuesday, Husband & I ran up and down the beach. I didn't have my Garmin, so I'm estimating based on time that it was roughly 3 miles. Man o' man that was a workout. Husband felt it mostly in his calves, I felt it in my abs. Running in sand is something all together different than running on hard surfaces or even packed trail.

On Thursday we thought about beach running again, but quite frankly I was not interested in being out in the sun. So we headed to the hotel fitness center where I succumbed to 5.2 b-o-r-i-n-g miles on the treadmill. If you have followed my blog for even a short amount of time, you will know how difficult that was for me. I despise the treadmill. But, I figured it was better than skipping the run, so I endured.

We got back late yesterday evening and I had 12 miles on the calendar for today. Our normal running time is 8am, which wasn't looking so good given that it was snowing when our flight came in and was supposed to snow all evening. I was actually relieved when I got a text from my running partner that he needed to postpone his run from 8am to 11:30.

As it turns out, by the time we started running, the storm had passed and the sun was back out. And Husband decided to join us! Seemed like it was going to be a good run.

And it was. For 9 miles, that is.

Then my knee started to bother me. Not good. I decided to ease up and let my running partner go on ahead. I was determined to finish this run, but I needed to back off the pace. That worked fairly well until the last mile. By then I was doing a full-on limp-hobble-shuffle. Still determined to get in the mileage, I backed off some more.

About two hours and sixteen minutes after I started, I was back at the car. Nine minutes after my running partner made it in. That means I slowed down an average of 3 minutes per mile on those last three miles. Blah.

So, I'm chalking this up as my first bad run of the season. All I can do is shake it off, take care of my knee, and try again next time. And hey, without the bad runs, we'd never appreciate the good ones, right?

Now I have a BUNCH of blogs to catch up on. Enjoy your weekend!!