Catching up...

So, I never did the final short run I had planned for mid-week. Thursday I slept through my alarm, possibly for the first time since high school. That was kind of annoying. Everyone I told said, "Well, you must have really needed the sleep!" But I often need the sleep and yet still wake up to my alarm. Anyway. Then Friday morning, it was pouring rain with thunder and lightning, and it seemed neither appealing nor particularly safe to go out running.

So, my legs were unintentionally well-rested for Saturday's team 8-miler. Although it wasn't on purpose, that actually worked out very well -- makes me wonder if I should adjust my mid-week training schedule to include maybe 2 longer runs early in the week instead of several shorter ones throughout the week. As we get up into the high mileage for team runs, having muscles that aren't fatigued from my mid-week runs could be a real plus...

Anyway, the 8-miler was great on Saturday. It had rained a lot the night before, and within the first half-mile, we came to a stretch of park that was complete flooded with 6-7 inches of standing water. There was no way to go around it, so Coach Ethan had us splash on through. This meant that we ran most of the 8 miles with soaking wet feet. I was lucky not to get any blisters! On the plus side, Coach Ethan says we've now earned our badass stripes. :-) The last 3 miles or so were challenging because they were hilly, and we haven't done any hill training yet. But I didn't feel completely dead at the end, and I wasn't too sore today.

As a side note, I was coerced into trying a vanilla-flavored PowerBar Gel between miles 5 and 6. You might recall that I have kind of a conceptual aversion to energy gels, but there was peer pressure, and I buckled. Not surprisingly, it was really terrible. Everyone had warned me about the texture, but I think the taste was the worst part. Yuck! No more gels for me. I might get some of the sport beans and see if they're a little more palatable.