Work will win when wishy washy wishing won't

Wow!  I can't believe it's August!  I remember thinking January was never going to end and now it will be January again before we know it!  

Tom went out and got three miles in while I got Tyler and Jansen off to youth conference.  I joined in  for our 5.1 loop after the boys were gone.  The youth are heading down to my old stompin' grounds, (Tom's too).  They are going to the Manti Temple for baptisms and then doing other things down in Sanpete County.  I use to work for Doug Barton at KMTI in Manti.  I was a DJ on the radio.  He is the keynote speaker for the youth conference.  It's fun to have your kids go places and be with people from back in the day.  I hope they both have a great time!

Update on the missionary.  He only has 7 months left.  We got our weekly email from him this morning.  He is doing great, (needs more American deodorant though!)  He said we may be receiving some Japanese visitors who are in Utah at the moment.  That would sure be fun!  For any of you who are nervous about sending a missionary out....it is fabulous!  I love being a missionary mom!  I think I will love having a missionary home too!  But then it will be time to send another one out! 

Hope you all have a great day today!  And happy weekend and long runs!

Tom and I met with the SF group this morning. It was already 75 degrees at that time. Yuck! However, as we made our way into some of the areas surrounded by fields we were able to feel some cool breezes that were quite welcome! I don't see Tom after the first mile on these group runs. He is in the speedy group and I am in the other group. There were quite a few out today so there were plenty of people to have conversation with. Lots of marathon talk. Everyone's gearing up and getting excited. I try to listen very carefully to anything I can learn from other people's experiences. Today I learned to really be careful not to start out too fast and to remember my running shoes!

Now I have a lot more to accomplish today so I'd better go!  I think I'm going to wish I had time for a little nap today. Unfortunately, I'm thinking that will have to wait for tomorrow.   

It was nice today to wake up feeling better about the world than I have the past few Monday's.  Coach Tom had a 5 1/2 mile tempo run planned for me this morning.  We warmed up for 2 miles and then did the 5 1/2 with some cool down miles to take us back home.  I think it went quite well.  The first mile is always the hardest to find the right speed.  We had a window from 8:15 -8:45 to shoot for.  

1.  8:42

2.  8:14

3.  8:04

4   8:07

5.  8:02

1/2.  3:55  (7:52 pace)

Over all average pace  (8:12)

Time for 5 1/2 miles was 45:06 

Lots of nasty smells in the air this morning!  Yuck!  I don't even like good smells when I'm running and these were definitely not anywhere near "good"smells!  Here's to good smells the rest of the day!  Happy smells to all of you! 

This morning I ran 3 miles with Tom as he warmed up for his turn at the tempo run.  We parted ways at that point.  I kept things easy with an ave. pace of 9:35.  I hardly saw anyone else out this morning.  We did see 5 cute teenage deer right off the side of the road.  Three of them had fuzzy little antlers growing.  They weren't a bit scared as we passed them.  They just watched us pass.  

I'm going to buy my marathon shoes today.  I'm really getting excited about things!  Tom and I are hoping to go to St. George for our anniversary next month.  For part of our celebration we want to run the last half of the course so I can have an idea of what I am getting myself into.  It's crazy to think of really running 26.2 miles!  Do you think I will ever want to do it again?  I wonder if I have caught the marathon bug?  I know I have caught it for this one, but I wonder if it will be cured by this or inflamed for more....!?

Today's run was suppose to be 11 miles down Payson Canyon. It has been open since the fire, but for some reason it was closed when we tried to get up there this morning. So our crew of 11 or 12 had to come up with an alternate plan. The plan we ended up with involved much more up hill than we were expecting. But it also gave a some good down hill. We went over and up into Elk Ridge. It was a very invigorating workout. It took a while to change the mental outlook of what we had planned. I guess it's good to have to change things up a bit and see how mentally tough we can be.

Our van broke down yesterday. Today we will find out how big of deal it will be to fix it up. Not sure how much money we want to put into it at this point, but we also don't want to buy a new vehicle yet either. Hmmmm. What to do.......?

I finally have a minute to blog.  Tom and I ran our easy 6 mile loop this morning.  It was fun to have our friend, Kay join us for half of it.

Our family had such an enjoyable evening last night!  The Adachi's from Japan were able to join us for dinner.  They also had a friend and 2 students with them.   The Adachis are a wonderful couple who feed the missionaries often in Japan.  They have had our son, Camron, over to their home for dinner.  It was so fun to meet them.   They had great things to say about Cam!  They said he speaks Japanese so well!  We took some fun pictures that they will take back to Camron.  I wonder how it will make him feel to see them in our home with his brothers and sisters and parents and dog?  Tomorrow we will meet another Japanese friend of his who happens to be visiting Utah right now!  What a fun week! 

I ran 18 miles today! Woohoo!

This was my first 18 miler EVER! I felt better at the end of today's run than when I ran my first 16 miler a few weeks ago. Tom was just running a couple today in preparation for tomorrow's 1/2 marathon. So I got out at 5:00 and met Kay. We ran about 6 1/2 together before she had to go. I went a few alone and then picked up Tom for his 2. Then I was off for the rest myself. I wasn't sure what I would do today. I was planning on 12 -16 but I was just feeling it today and decided that I would get my first 18 in this week instead of next week. At about 15 1/2 Beth E. joined in with me for a little less than a mile. It was fun to have a few people to run with along the way.  Tomorrow I will just get a few gentle miles in as I watch Tom and lots of other friends do the Provo River 1/2.

Tom and I get to go to lunch with another friend that our son has met in Japan.  He is here in Utah for a few days.  We look forward to meeting him.  And I think I'm gonna be HUNGRY for lunch!  So Coach Tom, don't be picking anything off of my plate, I want it ALL today!

I am just so excited about today's run!  I hope the rest of you had a great run today, or I hope you can live vicariously through my runner's high I've got going! 

After my 18 miler, (in case you missed reading my blog yesterday....:D), I promised Coachy Boy that I would keep it nice and easy today. I also knew I was approaching a 50 mile week for the first time. So anyway, I ran 1 1/2 alone and then 2 with our very own fastrunningmommy! It was great to run and visit with you Sarah! You are always a joy to be with!

It was fun to cheer on all the fastrunningbloggers at the Provo River 1/2! Great job to all of you! Even to those of you who didn't finish quite like you had hoped!  It was great to meet a few more of you and see some that I haven't seen for a while. 

Monday's are STINKY!  I say that because it is garbage day here and we have to run past everyone's garbage cans out by the road!  Yuck!  I like when we get down to the riverbottoms and don't have as many garbage cans.  But then we have some skunk smells and some farm smells and some deer smells....  oh well, I guess the smells are part of the whole running experience.  Today we had to watch out not to trip on a rooster.  There were a couple in the road as we passed by.  There were also a couple of adolescent deer who looked like they wanted to join us for our run.   

Tom and I warmed up for 1 1/2 miles and then did a 6 mile  tempo run, (my pace not his), then finished up with a 1 1/2 mile cool down.  The average pace for the tempo part was 8:25.

"Running it's all about a good time!" Pretty clever, huh? You can read that two ways...I just noticed that is Tom's new blog name. Well, we had a good time this morning! THREE O'CLOCK THIS MORNING! He was a good sport and joined me for a very early run so we could go out to the river bottoms and enjoy the light show from the Perseid meteor shower! How cool is that?! It was quite enjoyable! It was dark, not another soul around anywhere. There were orchestra's of crickets, a fun light show and a cute guy standing there with me! There were times that we saw several shooting stars and some times with lulls, but all in all it was a good time! When we got home we snuggled back into bed and got a few more hours of sleep.  Good times indeed!  :)

Today was the group run down Payson Canyon. It was a very nice morning. I'm getting nervous about the cooler temps that will quickly approach us, but today was about perfect in my opinion. It is 11 miles from our drop off point to Pateetneet. Our son, Tyler, woke up early with us to take the gang up the mountain and bring the van back down. Then he had to wait there until we got down. "Thank you very much Tyler! I know your sleep in days are very few before school starts next week! We all appreciate your help. And I'm glad you traveled down the canyon safely!"

I ran with Beth E. until mile 8 where I needed to visit the little girl's bushes. So the last 3 were on my own until I met Tom in the last mile as he had turned back to meet me. I had forgot to grab my garmin so I am waiting for Beth to send me our pace for the 8 miles.

 Update:  Beth just emailed me the splits for the 8 miles I was with her. 

7:26  7:10  7:08  7:04  7:39  7:12  7:06  7:07  Woo Hoo! 

Tom and I got up and ran our 6 mile loop.  It took a few miles for the legs to wake up, but they did.  I'm feeling good after my down hill yesterday.  Tomorrow will be another easy day and then I will do 15-18 on Saturday.  

Another easy morning to get ready for a long run tomorrow. We ran with our friend, Anita, for a few minutes. She is recovering from the Half Ironman from last Saturday. I am so impressed with her! And she thinks I'm crazy because I'm doing a half marathon next Saturday. Her reasoning is that "at least she gets to ride a bike and go swimming when she did the Iron man!" OK! Makes sense to me?!???

I won't make a big deal out of this 20 miler like I did for my 18 miler last week. The SF group started out with about 13-14 people. The real speedsters, (4 or 5 people), broke off early. Tom actually went with another guy outside of the group. The rest of us went down around Leland and up to Gu corner where several turned around. Four of us headed out towards Harry's Hill. Two of us were up in front of the other two and didn't notice them turn around somewhere. So it ended up that Dave L. and I took it to the top of Harry's and the rest of the way on our own.

I was glad I didn't end up having to go it alone today. We over shot our 18 so I was at 19.1 when I was approaching my house. Since I was that close to 20 I decided to PASS my house and get a little more in. About one block before I got back to my house my left knee started to cause a little pain in the IT band area. I hope I didn't do a bad thing by adding the extra miles on today. It took my weekly miles up a little higher than they should have been.  I will take it pretty easy next week to recover from this week and get ready for Hobble Creek next Saturday.

Now, hopefully I can function the rest of the day.  Not a lot planned, but my parents are coming up and I hope I won't be too dead to enjoy time with them, Tom and our kids. 

I have had too many things going today so I haven't had much of a chance to blog. And now that  I have a minute, I'm not really in a blogative mood.  So the quick rundown.

Five easy miles, all between 10-11 mpm.  No knee pain!  :)
 

Since Tom was going to be doing a tempo run this morning and I didn't have another running partner arranged I decided to try to get a little extra sleep and run a little later. The extra sleep worked a little bit, but not as well as I had hoped.

Tani and Tia, (our 10 and 7 year old daughters), and a couple of their friends joined me. They all rode their bikes as I ran to the elementary school. At the school they all played on the playground while I made several loops around the school area.

We were going to come home and get ready for the back to school meet your teacher day but we got having too much fun and decided to just stay up there until it was time to go in. I don't love seeing so many people that I know when I'm in the running garb with no make up. But today was even a little more embarrassing because I was trying out my purple ponytail for Saturday's race. I think I might make it my new signature for races. If the purple ponytail does me good for Hobble Creek you can bet it will be back in my hair for the marathon. However, if Hobble Creek ends up being a bad race for me then I'll blame the purple ponytail and toss it to never see it again!

Two mile warm up then Tom helped me through a 4 mile tempo run.

mile 1. 8:05

mile 2. 8:07

mile 3. 7:56

mile 4. 7:28

ave for tempo 7:55

While we were out we saw a shooting star.  It was weird though  because it wasn't even dark anymore when we saw it.  I'm sure it means today will be a great day and the race on Saturday will be perfect for all FRBers!  (or maybe it was a UFO and the world will be taken over by aliens today and the race will be called off.)

Kids are back to school in our area today.  It's kind of a bitter sweet time.  It's good to get back into a better routine again, but I kind of miss having them around. 

This morning Tom and I ran into our friend, Sarah, who was just trying to decide if she wanted to go for a walk or get  a run in.  She decided to join in with us for our little loop.  It was fun to have her along with us.  I'm glad Tom and I haven't had the sickness set backs that they have had this summer.  They have had to make the decision to bag the SGM for this year.

Tom tripped on a wire or something that was in the road and just about had face contact with the road.  Luckily he caught himself before he went all the way down, but I hope he didn't pull anything.  

Two miles in prep for Hobble Creek tomorrow.  Tomorrow marks 6 weeks until SGM!

Good luck to all racing tomorrow, (where ever you may race or whatever distance it may be.). 

May we all have a good night's sleep!

May we all find porta potties when needed! (preferably before and after the race, not during!)

May we all stay injury free!

May we all run our best race!

May we all feel good with the effort we have put in to our training!

May we cross the finish line with a smile!

May we all say hi to an old friend and meet a new friend!

Update at midnight: I just got an email with my results. I actually did better than I thought. I thought I was 1:43:40 but it turns out I was 1:42:49. I was 8th out of 61 finishers in my age division.
My first Hobble Creek experience has been wrapped up. I'm not sure if Tom and I had the greatest rest last night. It seems like one or the other of us were up here and there. But I did sleep better than I thought I would. We left our house at 5:00 and were there to be the final people on the first bus up. It wasn't too chilly at the start so we weren't freezing there. (some people were, but they must be from Arizona or something.) I knew that it was probably going to be too warm in the last miles. Jill R. and I started out together. We wanted a better place in the lineup, but it was very crowded and hard to get where we wanted. It took a bit to get to the start line when the race began and then there were a lot of people to weave through for the first mile. It really slows you down when you have to do that. I'm going to try to get a better start spot from here on out. There are a lot of people who go up front and then just make you stumble over them....grrrrr! The first 3 or 4 miles seemed to go quite quickly to me, in fact, even up to about 7 or 8 I felt like the race was passing quickly. But that feeling changed! Especially miles 11 and 12, I think both of them were really 4 miles each! :) Anyway, I wanted to get under 1:45 and I did it. I wanted to be one of the top 100 women and I did that.(received a nice little medallion for that.) I wanted to be in the top 10 of my age division and I did that. I don't know the official time or my overall until the results come up. I know that I was 233 out of everyone, including men. I feel pretty good about that. I'll add my splits so I can analyze them. I know I probably went out too fast, (after the first crowded mile.) If I would have kept them a little slower I may have had a little more umph at the end. Oh well, I am happy with the race and my effort. 1. 8:35 2. 7:10 3. 7:27 4. 7:03 5. 7:33 6. 7:35 7. 7:55 8. 7:14 9. 8:06 10. 8:05 11. 8:21 12. 8:27 13. 8:18 .1 :44 Three things I learned today... 1. I know why the women Olympic marathoners wear next to nothing as they run. I wanted to strip down big time when that sun was shining down on me! (However, I refrained from doing so. :D) 2. I learned that, "Yes, I do want my hydration belt with me on the marathon!" (When Gu goes down it is nice to have the water right when you need it! 3. I really want my first goal for the marathon to be to finish! I will take any extras if they come, but I really want to focus on finishing and not being disappointed if I don't make a certain time. One final note....from my "may we's" from yesterday. I think I did all of them except I'm not quite sure I smiled as I crossed the finish line. I smiled really soon after, I'll have to take that for now and work on that better for the marathon where pictures will be taken!

My legs and body feel good after racing on Saturday.  Tom and I got out for a quiet morning 5er.  He added a few more on but I felt like 5 was probably good for me today.  

I need smiles today.  If you've got an extra one to send my way I will gladly accept it.   

Thanks to all who sent smiles my way yesterday.  It ended up being a better day.  I'm hoping today continues on in the way yesterday ended.  It started out good with a nice 6 miler with my very patient and loving hubby/coach.  Thanks Tom for always being there for me.

I love to go up into the canyon on these beautiful August mornings and see the dark sky with all those twinkling stars that we can't see quite as well from the city!  It is an amazing sight!  The cool, crisp air this morning was also very nice!  

We had a pretty good crew together for the Payson Canyon run.  It was fun to run with Jennifer, Kellie and JaNae today.  My Garmin is pretty much freaking out on me any more so it was quite useless to me.  But according to other people's Garmins I think we had about a 7:30-7:40 pace overall. 

Now my friend, Stacie, is taking me out for a belated birthday.  We are heading to the temple and then to some undisclosed something and lunch.  She is good at surprises and having a fun time so I'm sure I should enjoy my morning.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes.  I was well taken care of by family, friends, neighbors and bloggers! 
 

It's a good thing Tom and I are use to getting up before the alarm goes off because we had forgotten to turn the alarm on last night.  Woke up a bit late.  Able to get our 5 mile loop in.  

Yesterday my friend, Stacie, took me out for a birthday outing.  We went to the temple then to get a pedicure, (while sitting on a chair that gives a great massage while you get your pedicure), and out to lunch.  Very nice day with a good friend!  Thanks Stacie! 

Now off to stressful work.   Relax, Breathe....... 

Same old, same old.....Tom and Kim 6 mile loop.  (But I do have to say, I love the same old, same old!)

Gearing up for another 20 miler tomorrow and then a baptism at 9:00 a.m.  Do you think I can do it? 

Towards the end of yesterday's run I started feeling a pain in my right foot.  It hurt on the top and around the inside and down throughout the arch.  I didn't think much more about it because it didn't hurt the rest of the day while I was walking.  But this morning it hurt from the very first step.  

I kept at the back of the pack to see if keeping it slow would help me be able to get my 20 miles in today.  Neldon had an Aleve for me to take at about 8 miles.  It really helped my foot, but my IT band on my left leg was hurting.  I think it was because I was altering my stride because of the foot.  As I continued on I felt I better head back home a little earlier than planned.  It scares me to do something that will stop me from running SGM.   I have worked so hard this year, I can't imagine how I would feel if I were to do damage enough that would keep me from running the marathon.

I hope the rest day tomorrow will really help me out.  Neldon was telling me about a little contraption that him and his wife are trying out.  It sends charges through your body and is suppose to help with all kind of things.  Him and his wife have been using it this week and he has done much better with his 'bone on bone' knee that has really been a bother to him.  He said that I can probably come down later and try it out to see if it helps me out a bit.  I am willing to give it a try.  He seems pretty excited about it.