Halfway To a Half

I’ve missed my last few “Sunday long run” days so it felt great to get out today and run again.I won’t lie, having a sick toddler who insisted on sleeping with me in a chair last night & eating WAY too much crap the other day really almost talked me out of a run. I knew I would feel better once I got up and moving, I really overall did!

There’s often talk about things runners think about while running among my friends and I. Today was really no exception.

In my head I thought my route had a lot of trees. About halfway through I realized I was 100% delusional in thinking there were trees. There were CLEARLY no trees on my workout. I have a suntan to prove it.

Somewhere around mile 4 or 5 I decided to start talking to myself about the half marathon at the end of October, I’m pretty sure I’m going to do. I’ve decided with 5ish months to prepare there will be no problem running 13.1 miles. I will also eat an entire cake by myself afterwards. I also really want this shirt for the race.

Around mile 5 I realized that I made A LOT of horrible food choices this weekend. Not only did I eat Pizza & Chinese on Friday but yesterday I ate the left over Chinese and made a trip to Dairy Queen. My stomach more or less has hated me all day today. I have NO idea how I used to eat like that on an almost daily basis & lived to tell about it.

I do not use the MapMyRun app but I did come to the conclusion (as I ran around the block an extra time) that when you use the “auto follow roads” option, it does throw off your overall mileage when you stay on sidewalks 99.9% of the time. This could also mean that some of my previous runs where I thought I was running 3.1 miles meant I was actually only running 3. The route I originally mapped out was 6.55 miles. Along the way I changed it up a bit to add length further away from my house instead of having to do an extra loop around the block. While the adjustment added a quarter of a mile, it didn’t even come close to the quarter mile I had hoped to avoid having to do at the end.

Am I the only one who hates actually running by your house while you’re on a run? It makes it so tempting to just give up.

Either way, I love MapMyRun but I’m learning to take it with a grain of salt. I really need to invest in a GPS watch so I can work more on pace & not drain my phone battery. I do love having my FitBit while running, but that does not do anything related to time or pace (and that is 100% okay!). It has helped me in so many other ways. Now I just need to get my running solidified.

I felt like I stayed fairly consistent on pace today which surprised me. My first three miles were around 9:07 a mile pace and my last three and a half came out to be almost exactly averaging 9:17 each time. I have my Nike Run app set to only talk to me at the mile markers.

5k races the next two weekends. Whoop Whoop!

What thoughts go through your head while running?