Twelve Miles – Oh Deer!

Oh goodness goodness!!  I am such a bad blogger.  But truly, if you knew how much work I am doing right now for my job (12 hour days are the norm right now), along with the fact that hockey started up this week…well, you’d feel really sorry for me. 😉

But, no pity parties!  There is a half marathon to train for!  🙂

I did my last set of intervals a week ago Monday. I cannot tell you how happy I was that they were done. 🙂 I really struggled with finding the enthusiasm to get up that morning, but somehow, I managed to drag myself out of bed, and run down the road really fast in quarter mile intervals 10 times. It was horrible hot, but I managed to do sub-8s for the first five.  I walked most of the breaks, and I did not even come close to sub-eights for four of the last five. But who cares? They’re done!! 😉

This week and last week, I’ve been doing a “new” set of weight exercises, a plan developed by my husband. I’ve mentioned that I’ve been having problems losing weight, so my husband said that I needed to get out of the weightlifting rut that I was in. He told me I was getting stagnant, I needed to do something new to surprise my body. So now I’m doing things like deadlifts. I dead lifted 50 pounds the other day, which really isn’t that much, but I was impressed! 😉

Saturday I ran 12 miles. It’s funny how that used to be a big deal, and while it certainly wasn’t easy, it doesn’t seem nearly as impressive as it used to, now that I’ve run 26.2. 🙂 I took it easy, since long runs are supposed to be easy, and I had an exciting surprise about halfway through:  I got to herd four deer across a major street!  I was running down West Jefferson, when I came across these deer trying to cross the road. There was a lot of traffic at that moment, and they were looking very skittish, but like they thought they were going to give it a try. They didn’t move as I got closer, and I started telling them, “Oh no, you don’t want to do that!” As I got even closer, they just stood there and looked at me.

I took a lot more pictures, but unfortunately they’re not nearly as good as they could’ve been, since it was with my phone, because I certainly don’t run with my DSLR.  😛 I couldn’t believe how close they let me get! Eventually, they ran back towards the house a little.

By that time I could see that the traffic was clear.  So I ran down the driveway to try to get behind them to shoo them across the road.  They weren’t listening to me though…they all just stood there staring at me. I kept yelling, “Go! Now’s your chance!”   They still weren’t listening, so I got closer. At that point, the one with the little horns, or antlers I guess, got down into kind of an attack stance. Clearly he was taking his role as the man of the family very seriously! I backed off a little bit and eventually he figured out that it was better to run away from me. 😉  All four of them eventually made it across the road into a field.

There they go, safe and sound and off to their next adventure. 🙂  It was definitely an exciting running moment for me!

I didn’t stop my Garmin during the deer incident, and I ran comfortably for the remainder of my run. I ended up with a decent average pace.

That includes all my stops, so it’s not too terrible for me.  But the most important part is that I finished, and that I had a fairly fun run, for a change. 🙂

Hey, did I mention I gave up carbs last week? I did, and I only took three hostages as a result. 😉 Actually, I found giving up carbs to be a lot harder than I expected. I didn’t realize how many of my meals include carbs, and how much carbs are my “go to “food when I’m hungry.  I was not successful in completely giving up carbs, simply because I had my pre-bought lunches, and there was one night when Jason forgot that I was not eating carbs and made chicken enchiladas. I opened up two and pulled out the filling, but I didn’t feel like doing that for the third one, so I did have one tortilla. I did, however, managed to avoid having my beloved English muffins this week. And we had some interesting side dishes to replace our usual rice, potatoes, and pasta–like sweet potato wedges. Those turned out to be really good! Sorry, no picture, because, well, I was hungry!

And after all that, the scale said…

Down almost 3 pounds! I know I shouldn’t be so focused on the scale, and that I should take that with a grain of salt, but it did feel good to not be above 125 for the first time in a while. I’m so determined to get down below 120, and then I can worry about getting back to my goal weight. I’m trying to take it in small steps.

At any rate, now it’s onto the next challenge:  I get to run 13.1 miles tomorrow!  On the one hand, I’m excited because my husband and I are going to travel to the west side of the state together and hang out this afternoon, before I have to get up and run early tomorrow morning.   On the other hand…I’m less than enthusiastic about this email I just got.

Oh yay. :/  We had a similar email before the Chicago Half Marathon last year, and we all know how that turned out.  Hopefully I can be smarter about this race and know my limits.  Not expecting any PRs, but hopefully it will be a respectable run, if not spectacular.

My sister is coming to watch the boys this afternoon, so it will be a fun trip for just my husband and me.  Last week, we celebrated the 22nd anniversary of our first date, so this will be a nice chance for us to get away and enjoy some “couples” time together.   You know, with a 13-mile race thrown in there for fun. 😉

Hope everyone has a great weekend…see you soon! Thanks for reading!