Happiness is What You Make It

So, I’ve totally given up on the Hal Higdon post-marathon training program. 😛 It’s not that it was bad, it’s just that this week, it had me running 5 miles three times, and I just don’t feel like getting up at 4:30ish to run five miles before work right now, and certainly not three times in a week! (Plus there’s a 40-minute tempo run on Friday…and that’s not even counting the long run on Saturday!) And one of those 5-milers was actually an interval run…yuck!

I’m not really training for anything right now (other than Jamie’s  Kona 10k next month), so, I just decided to wing it. Jamie had a hockey tournament last weekend, so I had to do my long run solo. It was sticky and warm, and the humidity hung in the air like a wet towel.

I was a sweaty mess by the end, but it felt pretty good.  

Aren’t my lilacs lovely? They’re so lovely, they can even make my water bottle look picturesque. 😉

Saturday was my husband’s birthday, but of course we were involved in hockey all day, and that included a trip to Canton (on the Westside of metro Detroit) for a late game. We decided to go out to dinner to celebrate his birthday while we were in the area, and we found an Italian restaurant called Rose’s. I I ordered a dish with pasta and shrimp, that I thought was going to come with a cream sauce, but it turned out to be tomato-based. I’m glad I did though, because it was delicious

Sorry, good food photography is pretty much impossible using a cell phone. :p

The boys played hard all weekend, but ended up 0-2-2.  Those two ties were pretty impressive performances, though! 

Monday morning, it was even MORE ridiculously hot and muggy then it was on Saturday, as hard as that was to believe! It was 70° at 5 AM, with a 97% humidity. I was supposed to run 5, but that’s the moment at which I said to hell with the plan.  😉 I ended up running at 10:34 pace according to the Garmin, but I know that’s not entirely accurate, because it had me hitting a mile way sooner than I should have. But still, I had a good sub-11 run, which is something that I been shooting for now that I’m not training for a marathon anymore. Eleven-minute miles just seem too slow!

The next morning I got up and it was about 15° cooler and much less humid! It was a much better run, I felt pretty good throughout. I actually maintained a sub-10:40 for the first three, which felt good. For the last mile, I discovered at the halfway point that I was doing a sub-10, and I decided to try to see if I could get a new “record” mile (based on the watch only being in use since early January) for the last one.  I really pushed it, and I was really excited when I got done with the run and it showed me my results:

Yes, I know that at 9:34 is not my fastest mile ever, but it’s my fastest mile since December, so it felt pretty good. 

I ran again on Wednesday, and then this morning I had a really hard time convincing myself to get out of bed. The boys were off school today, which meant I didn’t have to help them get ready and out the door by 6:30. I slept in an extra 20 minutes, and it was really hard to convince myself to go out. But I guess my determination won  out over my laziness, and I’m glad it did. The sun is rising about 6 AM these days, so I was treated to an amazing sunrise for my entire four-mile run:

That picture doesn’t even do it justice. I think one of my favorite things about running is the number of sunrises I’ve been able to witness in the last three years.  And yet, in the other direction, I saw this:

Yikes! Thank goodness the dark clouds were moving away from me! 🙂

Last week, I weighed in at 125.2, which was down about half a pound from the week before. Obviously, there’s been some post-marathon weight retention. I’ve been trying really hard to stay on track, and this week I actually lost 1.2:

So, that’s moving in the right direction, at least! 

I was thinking this week that I’m coming up on my three-year anniversary of making Lifetime at Weight Watchers.  Although I’ve been struggling in trying to get back down into the (ideally) 115-range that I was at in early 2014, a few days ago, I decided to look up my original lifetime weight from three years ago. I was surprised to find that I actually weighed 121 the week I made Lifetime. That was about six weeks after I started running, so clearly, the running helped take a few more pounds off.  But although I don’t foresee myself ever getting back to my lowest-ever weight (113!), I’m sticking with my “new” goal of getting below 120.  I actually did do that back in March (for one week), so I’m hopeful I can do it again soon.  I really want to make it back to my original Lifetime weight of 121 by my three-year anniversary.  Three pounds in two weeks might be asking a lot, but it’s an admirable goal if nothing else, right? 😉

I need to get to bed, because I have a buddy run in the morning, but I’ll leave you with a picture that is near and dear to my heart.  As most of my readers know, I live in the country, and it is one of the great joys of my life to live where the land is open and there are crops and animals everywhere I go.  We used to live in the City of Detroit, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that urban living wasn’t for me; though I mostly grew up in the suburbs, I had lived in the country for my middle school years and had many wonderful memories of that time.  My husband liked the idea, too, but when we were looking at homes in Monroe County, we struggled to find the “right” home at the right price.  We were house-hunting in late June/early July, and on our way  to yet another listed home, we came upon a field that was filled with beautiful wheat.  It was right on a corner and was blowing beautifully in the wind, all golden and majestic…just what you’d expect rural America to look like.  As we drove by, I thought to myself, “I want to live in a place where I can see that every year.”

Though it wasn’t an easy process, we did end up buying that home, and now I live just half a mile from that field.  🙂  The field is still there and still farmed, but they don’t plant wheat every year, of course (crop rotation is important).  So, every year in the early spring as I drive by the field each morning, I look to see if the wheat is coming up.  They plant it in the fall and it comes up in the spring, looking like thick, lush green grass.  It continues to grow and lighten until it’s fully grown right around July 4, and it gets harvested not long after.

The wheat has come up in that field maybe 4 or 5 times in the 12 years we’ve lived here; the other years, it’s usually soybeans or sometimes corn.  The times I see the green grass poking up out of the earth in the spring, it always puts a smile on my face and in my heart.  About 7 years ago, the wheat was coming up, and I decided to get a picture of my boys in the field, just because it was such a great juxtaposition of things that make me happy.  Since then, I’ve been waiting to see it again, and…guess what? It’s back! 🙂  And my sweet darling boys indulged their mother one more time.

I love everything about those pictures. 🙂

Thanks for reading, and I want to wish a blessed Memorial Day to everyone, as well.  Thank you to all of those in the military for your service and your sacrifice.  {{hugs}}