July 21??

Are you kidding me?  I think someone stole July 1-20, because I don’t recall any of it, well that’s not really true, but it went by so fast.  I hate how summer flies by and winter creeps. 

We’ve had some pretty decent runs, no real “WOW that was an awesome run” or “WOW that really sucked” well I take that back on the sucked part, Tuesday sucked, my insides were coming out, or that’s what it felt like thanks to Mother Nature, but we won’t dwell on that subject, Ugh…. 

Today we had a guest runner with us, Madelyn from the Little Rock Marathon Training Group met me and Kim at Lakewood lake #3 at 5:15am.  It was nice to have someone new to run with, Kim and I talk about the same ole crap and bitch about the same ole crap everyday!  We need someone else’s crap to listen to for a change.  It was a nice run, I think she might be a tad bit faster than us, at one point she got pretty far ahead of us and then I think she realized she didn’t know where she was going and fell back in line with us.  The time went by faster than normal, but it was still super hot and humid.

I tried out a headlamp this morning in preparation for the Full moon 25K, which I strapped around my chest, bad idea, for one thing it bounced back and forth way too much and then it started sliding down.  You may be asking your self, how did it slide down, didn’t her boobs catch it? Uh, no, I strapped it under the boobage, such as it is, ending up ditching the light before we got 1/2 a mile.  Will try the Petzl on the forehead tomorrow.

Work is getting worse instead of better, so I am officially on the job hunt, well officially afer I find my resume which is on a disk from my blown up computer, I hope and pray.

Started a new Boot Camp at the Community Center, love it!!  I’m going once or twice a week, depending on the running schedule, wish I could go more, hope it will make me not so jiggly.

Dead Squirrel

There was a stench in the air when I opened the shed to get the lawnmower out, the task of locating a dead animal was not fun, but easy, I just followed the flies. Gross, removing the poor dead squirrel from the shed will not soon be forgotten, gag, hold breath, gag, shovel, scoop, gag, hold breath until I almost passed out. Disgusting.

Lazy Days and Baby Girls

Yes, it’s been awhile since I have posted anything, but mostly, I’m pooped.  Running about 40 miles a week and work sucks ass.

There are no more cool morning runs, they are all sweat filled bitch fests, mostly me bitching about work, I’ve got to start looking for something else, the stress is driving my acne into massive overdrive and then that stresses me out too!  GEEZZZZ

On the run front, the relay that I was planning on doing in October, out.  Not enough participation on my team so…..along with my friend Eric, who was going to do the relay too, we signed up for the Boston 1/2 Marathon to be held on 10-10-10, it sold out in about 3 hours, I’m pumped!!  Then the following weekend I will be tagging along with Kim to Nashville, TN where I will run the last 10-15 miles with her in her first Ultra, 50 miler!!  Oh, and that’s not all, Tupelo 1/2 Marathon on September 5th and St. Jude’s 1/2 Marathon in December, WOW!!  That sounds like a bunch of freaking running!  I should be ready with all this mileage.

Baby Girls, what can I say, my little sweet pea grandbaby is just the best, I try to keep her at least one day each weekend and it’s the best part of my week!  She is just 6 weeks old but the sweetest thing ever, I never knew how much I would enjoy her.  Here are some great pics of her that were made when she was 4 weeks old, I think I must have one of each since I could never pick just one.  http://www.kristinhollensworth.com/blog/sydney-little-rock-arkansas-newborn-photography/

What else?  Getting old and not liking it at all, my ass is getting wider, I’ve giving trying to LOSE any weight, cause it’s just not happening!  Haven’t been on the scales in 2 weeks!  I used to weigh myself every Friday without fail, no more, it’s too depressing.  Wrinkles and saggy skin, yuck and double yuck, I will find a way to finance a new face, soon.  I don’t know what to do about the wrinkles on my knees though, where the hell did those come from?

Rave reviews – Couple of things I’m loving these days.  SofSole Socks, to be exact the Coolmax Trainer low-cut sock, they are perfect!  Cushioned on the bottom, but super cool on top, oh and the best part, they DON’T slid down my foot!  They are seamless and stay put, feet are dry and in this heat….yippee!  Another thing I love is Maybelline Colossal Volume mascara, it’s the best, believe me I’ve tried tons, Clinque, Estee lauder, Loreal, which I do love Loreal Natural instincts mascara too, but all the others, nope.  The only problem with the Maybelline Colossal is I seem to buy it more often, like there is not that much in the tube?  not sure.

Things I’m hating – My old sports bras, ugh, I really need to invest in some new ones, all my good old ones, they really aren’t that old are stinky, some worse than others, but I hate to give them up cause I love them even though they smell like sweaty girl runner.  I also hate how EVERYTHING is going up in price, except my paycheck, groceries are ridiculous, gas, utilities, DSL, insurance, satellite (Directv), iced mocha’s, my mortgage just went up 90 bucks a month!  Did I get a raise to pay that extra $90? nope, guess I’ll have to cut my iced mochas out, which I only get as a treat after long runs 😦  It’s just sad that we work so hard to buy things, to have things and we get less and less and can’t even save a penny toward any savings because it all goes to living everyday, that really pisses me off.  OH, and I get my 401K statement today, OMG, I lost a little over $4000 last quarter, are you kidding me?  nope, $4000 smackeroos down the drain, made me a little nauseated.

Gotta run for now, OH I ALMOST FORGOT!!!  Kim and I are running the Full Moon 25K next weekend at Lake Sylvia, it starts at 8pm, eek!!  We are so excited I don’t know how I forgot!  We will be armed with headlamps and bug spray!  It should be loads of fun!

Sweat Fest

Wow! I’m nothing but a ball of sweat! Temperature 75, but the humidity is 93%! Yikes!! Got in 5 miles with Kimbo this morning, good run except for the breathing part, I must have misplaced my gills.

Yucky run

Horrible run this morning, not sure what the problem was. Ran 3.5 miles walked about 1 mile after that, just didn’t have the umph, oh well, I will try again tonight.

I need to….

Wow, I have a huge list of I need to, but my motivation is lacking in most areas.  I need to clean my house, but ugh, I hate to clean, I would rather read or watch a movie.  I need to pay bills, but I would rather cut off my arm and for some reason my online banking isn’t working, so I guess I don’t have to do that today.  I need to mow the yard, but it’s yucky humid outside and I don’t want to sweat anymore today, plus the yard is dry and dusty and there is nothing worse than sweating with yard stuck to you.  I need to sweep the driveway, stupid neighbor keeps blowing his yard shit in the street which in turn blows in my driveway, he is uphill from me, I cuss him every week, this week I stood on my porch staring at him, cussing as he blew his yard clippings into the street.  I thought the daggers I was throwing him from my eyeballs would somehow pierce his brain, he’s an idiot.  I need to find my diamond earring, about a month ago I took them out while I was in the living room, laid them on the end table and told myself, get up and put them away, get up and put them away, okay in 5 minutes.  Well, I forgot and when I got up in the morning, OH NO!!!  I remembered and one was missing, I’m sure Roxy has either eaten it or batted it somewhere never to be found.  I have searched for it and still continue to search for it, but it bothers me every weekend that I still can’t find it, woe is me. 

Let’s talk about the weekend, last weekend, I was the recipient of baby S, an all day babysitting duty, it was just grand, she was perfect except for the 2 screams when she was hungry.  Kim came by and squeezed in some time with her too. 

Running all week with a couple of very nice mornings where the humidity was much lower, heavenly, puts a little pep in your step.  I wanted to take a rest day toward the end of the week, but didn’t because of the coolness, I’m glad I didn’t because I would have kicked myself for missing the nice weather.

On Thursday instead of meeting everyone at Easy Runner for our group run we had a treat at Murray Park, we were joined on our run by Joan Benoit Samuelson, yep, Olympic Gold medal winner, impressive to say the least.  When I was driving down to the Park I saw this small woman running (fast) with this read cap on, I thought to myself, that’s her, no doubt, nobody else around here would be running like that! 

Got to our pavilion and waited for the girls to get there, I had printed out some info on Joan, which was just overwhelming, she won Boston 2 times and came in 3rd another time, plus the Olympics, just an amazing career in running and apparently still going strong at 53!  Before long Kim came running up as I read off the list of Joan facts, then Sheryl and Kami drove up and I had to rope them into my madness too.

We were all waiting patiently for the Joan to show up and I knew it!! It was the little woman in the red hat, she just came running up out of nowhere.  Gary Smith the owner of Easy Runner introduced Joan and Tom gave us some instructions about the route and we were off.  Little did I know, the 4 of us were in front, but believe me, not for long, the pack just left us in the dust, Joan included, she whizzed past us with a pack of boys.

Our route took us over the Big Dam Bridge and then back, ugh for the bridge, it was hot, thank goodness there was a breeze or it would have been miserable.  Tom and Hobbit or Gary, not sure who, but they had managed to get some ice water on the NLR side of the bridge, it was much appreciated and needed!

We made pretty good time and were greeted by Tom with bottles of ice-cold water, needed as well!  We made jokes about my slow fat ass, yes it is slow and fat and old!!  We hung around for a bit, took some photos and headed out.

Friday night Easy Runner was having a little get together with Joan Benoit as the guest speaker, it was excellent!!  None of the other girls could make it, they really missed out, I really enjoyed it and am so glad I went!  She was also going to be at the Fast Firecracker 5k on Saturday, I was certain i wouldn’t see her on the course and I didn’t.

Race Report – I wasn’t definite about running this race until about Tuesday, but what the heck, I had a great PR in May and this might be my last race in this age group 😦 who knows I thought I might win an age group award, until I found out there were no age group awards…. Anyway, too late, already signed up.

Met Sheryl and Kami at 6:30 at War Memorial Stadium, finish area.  Helped them get their chips on their shoes and we waited on Kathryn.  She got there and we headed up the hill to the start, we made a bathroom stop at the Exxon, but it wouldn’t be our last.  We were lucky and found on street parking really close to the start.  We were walking up to the start when Sheryl and Kathryn both said they needed to go to the bathroom again, this was not looking promising we did not see any port-a-potties so we decided to do a warm up run down to Starbucks.

There was a long line in Starbucks but we had plenty of time.  I decided I better go too, just in case, the line moved quickly and we were out of the there and headed back to the Start.  We saw some very fast runners, oh you can tell the fast ones from the recreational ones for sure, especially the girls in panties instead of shorts, fast girls, this race has prize money and they were planning on being in the cash!

We decided to get in mid-pack (mistake) the air had changed from relatively nice to humid and no wind at all.  At least it was cloudy.  I saw lots of running peeps from days gone by, Annette, Jane, Joan, Vicki, Arland, Melissa and lots of girls from our Thursday night running clinic.  Before we knew it BAM it was time to go.  Very slow start, too many people bunched together and I could not get out of the pack.  It took me a good 4-5 blocks to get out of the crunch and then it was downhill!! literally. 

Annette told me before we took off that there were firecracker awards and I might be able to get one if I was around 25-26 minutes, I thought I might be able to do it, so that was my goal.  My PR in May was 26:38, short course though, 3 miles, not 3.1, but since it was downhill I could make up ground.  I wanted that stinking firecracker!  Mile 1 call out time was 8:40, my Garmin said 8:13, ugh, I was 27 seconds off.  Just kept pushing it, could feel my heart rate was high, tried to relax into the downhill and stay on the inside lane of the course to gain time.  I felt pretty good until about mile 2 and I could feel my energy slip a bit, I was getting tired. 

I had carried a bottle of water (of course) so I took a swig, not much help but it helped my parched throat, I could see War Memorial Stadium, but I knew the uphill section was coming and it was going to be tough and it was.  I think it is right at 2.5 miles and that hill sucks, especially after running so damned hard to get there!  But I just kept trudging up passing people.  When I got to the top I was out of breath, but could see the finish and what else did I see?  That little Patti person, where did she come from and how was she in front of me, DAMN IT!  I had to beat her, I just started pumping my arms as hard as I could to pass her, wasn’t sure if I could, I thought my heart was going to explode!  I could see the mats just ahead and I passed her!!  YIPPEE!!  Finish time on the clock 26:22, Garmin 26:19, no official results have been posted yet, but still a PR, which is shocking in itself!

I saw Kami ahead of me getting her chip taken off her shoe, how the heck did she get in front of me, I never saw her pass me, weird, I must have been in some sort of zone!  All I wanted was some ice cold something, sweat was pouring off of both of us, where was the damned water!!!  We finally found the water and some really nice bagged orange slices that were iced down, now that was delish!  We saw Kathryn and not long after that we saw Sheryl.  We all had a great race!   We hung around for a bit, grabbed some ice-cold sodas and then headed back up the hill.

Oh, by the way, no Firecrackcer, apparently you need to be around 24 minutes, dang it!!

We took some photos you can see on facebook and then headed our separate ways, I had to get home to babysitting duty with Baby S!  I barely got home when they were pulling in the drive with the baby.  She was very good and we had a great bonding day, love that baby!

Okay, enough, ran this morning with Kim at the River market, legs are a little sore from the race, think it was the downhill part, we ran 6 miles instead of our intended 8-10.  Oh well, we were out there on Sunday morning while most people were sleeping in.  I have got to get to that need to list!! 

Tomorrow rest day!! YIPPEE!!  Sleep in, maybe till 6 or so, drink coffee, lay around, ahhhh, day off.  Happy 4th everyone!

Time flies and running is tough

It seems like just yesterday I was struggling to run 3 miles, Saturday I was struggling to run 10 and actually didn’t, I only could muster 8.5, it was so humid and I couldn’t breathe. 

Let’s start with the week in review, it started out hot and ending hot, not complaining because I hate winter so much, but the mornings have been a little muggy to say the least, humidity has been around 90% or higher every day.  Kim and I have been balls of sweat by the time we finish, lots of stinky, wet clothes, but we are still managing to keep a good pace until this weekend.

We did see the fox once more during the week, he scared the crap out of us once more on one of our morning runs, we just steer clear and try not to look at him. 

Baby S news, poor thing, Stephanie called me on Wednesday morning and said they were at Children’s Hospital, WHAT!!, scared the crap out of me to say the least.  Apparently the baby had a horrible bout with diarrhea starting Tuesday afternoon and they went to the ER on Tuesday night when she was vomiting too.  They weren’t sure what was causing her distress so they did all sorts of test, including 3 attempts at a spinal, lots of cultures, finger pricks, and an iv in her tiny little hand. 

I made my way to the hospital where Stephanie and the baby were in some sort of nurses area, no rooms available, very cramped, but nurses right there with 4 beds, almost like a ward, but tiny.  No room for visitors for sure.  Tiny little 2 week old Baby S was sleeping, IV going to replace her fluids.  She did wake up an hour or so after I got there, Stephanie fed her and I burped her and held her, so tiny and sweet.  Poor sick little baby. 

Around 11:00am my Mother was on her way and since everything was quiet I headed to work.  I got a call around 1:00pm that they were going home, it was Rotavirus.  It can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting, the worse of which is the dehydration to tiny babies, usually strikes older babies though.  Probably some contact with some kids that were over on the weekend, ugh.  Anyway, she is doing much, much better.

Ahh, the run this weekend, Saturday started off good, Sheryl came and ran with us for 3 miles, we saw Tammy, but she didn’t run with us.  Not sure if I had a little heat exhaustion or just tired, but just felt drained, legs were heavy, waves of nausea, just didn’t think I could make the 10 miles so we turned off and headed back to the River Market.

We had a nice little shopping extravaganza at the Farmer’s Market, lots of fresh blackberries, peaches, blueberries, yum.  Then we settled down at a picnic table with some iced mochas or something iced, we weren’t really sure, but it was delish and cold.

Sunday, I was worried that the same thing would happen as Saturday.  We had decided to do the same River Market 10 mile route.  Kim and I met at 6am, it was 77 degrees with 91% humidity, ugh.  I told her I was going to take it easy, no speed demons. 

First stop was around 2.5 miles, Valero, coldest gas station ever, oh what a relief!  Off again, still feeling okay, second stop Doubletree hotel, probably around mile 5.5, nice cold hotel.  Next stop around mile 7, Holiday Inn where we asked for a cup of ice water, but this nice young Asian man gave us both styrofoam cups with lots of ice/water and straws, we looked like crazy runners I’m sure, carrying stryofoam cups, but we didn’t care, it go our body temperatures in check and really made a huge difference.

Around mile 9 I couldn’t catch my breath, we stopped at Capitol and Broadway, my heart rate would not go below 130, Kim’s of course was down to 88, go figure, once again, she’s a machine :).  I was looking uphill and dreading it, wondering why I couldn’t get my breathing or heart rate under control, hmmm, hot, humid, old, oh that’s probably it.  Bu, you would think by now I would be better at this, not so much.

It wasn’t getting any better so we took off for our last mile, it was tough, still carrying our styrofoam cups which we had poured our own water/G2/ctyomax into so it would be nice and cold, I don’t think we would have made the 10 miles without the ice water, it was definitely a good move!

Once we finally arrive back at the start we stretched, wiped off the sweat and grabbed an ice cole Diet Mt. Dew.  I tried to call Stephanie so we could go see the baby, but no answer.  We decided to go up to Starbucks and grab some caffeine while waiting on Stephanie to call us back. 

We drank our cold frappucinos outside and read part of the paper with a couple of gals and a huge dog, along with some smokers on the other end of the porch, ugh.  Still no call.  We headed to Walgreens to kill some more time, nothing much there either, when we leaving I tried to call Stephanie, yippee we got her and she said come on over!  Baby time!

It didn’t take us long to get over there, we washed our hands and it was Baby Time!!  Lots of holding, feeding, burping, cooing, we just had a blast.  Took some pictures, of course and had a nice visit.  I had taken over some baby pictures of Stephanie when she was newborn, the baby favors Stephanie much more than Aaron. :).

I was so happy the baby is feeling better, when we left she was all tuckered out.  After I dropped Kim off it was home to catch up on a few things around the house.

Wild Things!

It’s been a crazy week!  I’ve been extra busy at work, still can’t get a handle on my workload and I hate it, no sense of accomplishment, ever.  Very frustrating, it makes everything just a little more stressful.

It’s definitely summertime running, temperatures not getting below 70, usually our 5am runs have been around 72-75 degrees and muggy.  Not complaining too much, its lots better than winter, no decisions as to what to wear each morning, as little as possible. 

Ran with Sheryl on Tuesday night, which was probably the hottest run of the week, I’m guessing around 90 degrees, humid with little or no breeze at all.  We had a choice whether to run at the track with the Firecracker 5K group or the Go Running group, Kim wanted us to run with the Go Running group and we thought it would not be as bad since we wouldn’t A) be on the track and B) we would have some shade.  Well, we had some shade and we weren’t on the track, but it was hot and our speed showed it, I think our pace was around 11:00 minute miles and then Kim backed out on us 🙂 

Took Wednesday off from running, but was back in full force on Thursday with both a morning run with Kim around the hood where Kim scared the crap out of me!  We were over on the back side of Lake #2 when she said “Oh my God! Stop!”  I was looking all around, figured a snake, but she said no, it’s a FOX!  Sure enough over on the left hand side of the road there was a fox, just staring at us.  We weren’t sure what to do.  He was skinny and probably looking for rabbits, I knew we were not his prey, but I sure didn’t want a fox chasing us.  We looked away and walked on the opposite side of the street.  He finally sat down just like a dog.  We kept looking over our shoulders at him, it was the wildest thing!  A car finally came along and scared him off.  Whew!  I thought we had seen him before back in the winter when it was dark in the mornings, we saw something at that same spot, the silhouette looked like a fox, now I’m pretty certain that’s what it was.

Thursday night was our run with the Little Rock marathon group at Easy Runner, but at around 5:30 it was storming and pouring buckets!  I was running late because I had employees wanting paychecks and for some reason I was having computer issues, of course.  I had sent Sheryl a text and told her to sign me in.  I ended up getting over to Easy Runner just a little after 6pm, it was still lightning a bit, but the rain had let up.  We all ended up waiting about 15 minutes more until the storm passed and ran in the rain.  It was actually pretty nice not running in the 90 degree heat.  We had a decent run even though it was hills, again.

Friday it was raining so another rest day, my head was celebrating, but my fat ass was not.  For some reason I keep getting fatter, maybe I should quit eating so much.  According to my scales I gained 4.5 pounds in 1 week, is that possible?  Holy Shit that pisses me off!  Where the hell did I put 4.5 pounds, oh there it is, in my fat ass!!!  Geez….

Saturday, oh my, well it started off at 6am at ADEQ close to the River Trail.  Sheryl and kami where there too, but no Tammy.  Sheryl and kami were running 4 miles, me and Kim 10, Kim had gotten there at 5am and had already run 4 miles, training for her 50 miler. 

We realized it was going to be a scorcher when it started out at 78 degrees and super humid, sweating before we got a 1/4 mile into our run.  I was having problems breathing early on, not sure why, fat? probably.  We, me, Sheryl and Kim stopped at Cook’s landing to go to the bathroom, we noticed lots of bikers, lots more than normal.  Then we noticed some had race numbers, hmmm, didn’t think much about it and we were off again.

We lost Sheryl and Kami at Cook’s and we were on our own.  Lots of bikes, lots.  We were running on the River Trail and noticed tons of cars parked over at the soccer field, hmmm, it is some sort of race, we could see the Start banner.  We stopped at the nice new bathroom around mile 4 and ran into some girls on bikes.  They told us it was the Tour de Rock, all different mileage and they would be heading in the same direction as we were, uhh, okay.  She thought we might encounter the mass close to the Quarry and we might have to give way for a minute or two.  Okay, by us, we probably had about 1.5 miles to go before we turned around.

As we were coming up to the wooden bridge, behind us I could hear this roar, first it sounded like bees buzzing, it got louder and louder and then OMG!  It was the leaders of the race, zoom, zoom, I think I let out a little scream.  We looked back and there were hundreds of bikes, HUNDREDS!  We stopped and just watched, it was too dangerous to keep running.  We thought the mass of bikes had passed us and we started running again, but here they came, more bikes!  They even warned us “lots more bikes coming”, OMG, it was insane.  We thought we might wait a couple of minutes, but no way, we would have been there for 30 minutes or more waiting for them to get across the wooden bridge so we decided to turn around and take the soccer field route back.

We walked a few times, I just couldn’t breath, it was hot, but that wasn’t it, my heart rate was high, it wouldn’t settle in.  Normally, it gets to about 148 or 150, but it stayed around 160, which made me more out of breath, ugh.  I thought the run would never be over.  We only ended up with 9 miles, even though we took the long route back through the soccer fields, I felt like we ran 10 miles, oh well.

We had ice-cold Diet Mt. Dew’s waiting on us when we finished, oh man they were so good!  We stretched and then headed to my most hated store, Wal-Mart, I needed cat food, it happened to be the closest and it was actually a nice store (maumelle).  After that adventure I headed home to get the yard mowed and then later to see Baby S, she of course never woke up the whole time I was there, hoping she will at least wake up a bit when I go back this afternoon.

I have not had any energy today, no I did not run, thought about it, but just didn’t want to and my legs didn’t want to either, so we slept in to a whopping 5:30am!  Read the paper, drank coffee, washed clothes, played on the computer a bit, but just have no “umph”.  Maybe because my fat ass is lazy 😦

Back to running in the morning, gotta get this weight back off, hate it, makes me hate myself, jiggle butt.

Catching Up

Well it’s been a few days since I’ve posted anything, but I’ve been busy and really hate the computer.  So, just wanted to catch all my devoted fans 🙂 up on the news around my neck of the woods.

Running bunches, Kim has dragged me into her training and I’ve been running with Sheryl as well, so double duty, but I HOPE it is helping my endurance if not my fat ass.  I have to remind Kim that I need a day off every now and then, she is a machine!

Bigger news, drum roll please….. Grandbaby, yes, sweet bundle of joy arrived on June 2 after almost 24 hours of labor, not hard labor like in days gone by, they just dope them up!  But, that’s a whole other story.  Little Baby Girl arrived around 1am on Wednesday morning, National Running Day! weighing in at 8lbs 2oz.  Lots of dark hair.  I will try to get pics posted soon.  I’ve seen her almost every day since she was born, so sweet we just stare at her.

Work still sucks, economy sucks, here is something I noticed, don’t laugh, but my toilet paper rolls are bigger around, I mean the cardboard part, so that means less toilet paper, I also noticed the rolls are shorter too.  So, no the price didn’t go up, but we are getting less, hmmm.  Also, every bill, DSL, satellite, home insurance, car insurance, bills that are static, or the same each month, have all gone up, some by as much as 10%, but I am making less money than I made a year ago, hmmm, what do I cut in order to make up the difference?  Food, gas, doctor visits, dentist? Ugh… 

Well, I did not run this morning, but we are running tonight, so I need to get off of this computer and get ready for work.

Maumelle Double Run

This week the Little Rock Marathon Training Group met at Lake Willastein in Maumelle.  Kim is BACK from the Cleveland marathon and I guess she is ready to start her training for her next event, some 50 miler in Nashville.  UGH, this means she will be pulling me along in her crazy Kimmy Training.

We we going to run 8 miles yesterday, but I had to go to the bathroom so we made a slight adjustment to our route and ran up to McDonald’s for a quick bathroom stop, this gave us 8.71 miles for Saturday, pace around 10:32.  We also snagged a sign off the side of the road for Kim’s beau “Putting Greens Closed”, random sign, but perfect for him because he is a golf nut.  She toted that sign for about 5 miles.

Kim wanted to run again today and sent me a message last night, “let’s do the same route, say 9 or 10 miles” uhhh, okay, I say this lightly because my ass is so fat and I have got to get 4 pounds off!!  I thought I lost two pounds, but I found them, right on my ass!

We met at the same time in Maumelle to beat the heat and it was a lot warmer today, it didn’t take long before we were drenched in sweat, I think starting temp was mid 70s.  I wasn’t sure I would be able to do back to back 9 milers, it’s been a couple of months since I’ve done a couple of mid-distances back to back.  It was an out and back course so if it got too bad we could always cut it short.

We got to the Field of Dreams (baseball complex) and we spotted a large round object in the parking lot, hmmm, oh it’s a turtle who has lost its way!  We decided to move it over to the grass so it wouldn’t get run over, he was huge!  As soon as I picked him (or her) up he started peeing, eek, not on my new shoes mister!  He was as big as a salad plate.  I put him in the grass and of course he was shy and kept his head tucked in.  We were off again. 

Kim and I both had on new shoes (happy feet) my right foot has been throbbing for a few days, with or without running and I wanted to try out my new shoes.  They felt great for cushioning, Mizuno Wave Creation 11, I bought them a few months ago, but have been wearing my Brooks Glycerines until they wear out, I think they are close to the yard work retirement pile.  My foot, right where a bunion would be was still hurting, but the shoes will get 2 thumbs up.

As Kim and I were running on Count Massie Rd. we stumbled upon another turtle, who was destined to be run over since it was crossing the road, I grabbed her from the throes of certain death and put her on the side of the road, she was not scared at all, kept her head and legs out at all times, but she was much smaller, a one handed turtle. 

We ran the same route as yesterday, up to McDonald’s where we got two Big Mac’s to go, no, just kidding, we used the facilities and headed back.  It was a lot tougher today for sure, around mile 7 I was ready for it to be over, legs were heavy, breathing was getting harder and I was soaked.  We finished only about a minute or two after yesterday’s time, same distance, so not too bad at all.  Saved two turtles, saw one snake (dead) lots of birds, all of which I pointed out to Kim and named them too :), she thinks I’m just old (which I am), had Starbucks each day, yummy, and hopefully sweat off some poundage.  Sick of this extra fat around my middle!  Now it’s off to yard work, ugh.