Ugly Betty???

After my post race nap Saturday, I finally picked up my first pair of glasses! Over the last 2 years since starting my job my vision has been slowly starting to bother me :( I'm pretty sure it's from all of the time I spend on the computer and looking at small drawings. I went for an eye exam almost a year ago and the optometrist was surprised that I could even tell that my eyes were changing. So he gave me a prescription for the smallest increment on my right eye.

My prescription was about to expire and my eyes have been bothering me when I drive at night so I finally went and picked out a pair. I hopefully wont be wearing them all the time, mostly just for driving. Although now that I can see so precisely out of my right eye...now the left seems not as sharp!



I have also signed up for another race...Run for the Animals 10k.

I finished on the 50!

First things first...my 10 mile race Saturday morning went spectacularly well! The weather was just about perfect for a run, maybe a little bit too sunny. I felt like it was going to be a rough race with the way my runs had been going the week before, but I couldn't have been more wrong! I kept track of my mile times on my iPhone. I was surprised to see that my first mile was under a 9min pace since the course was very congested at this point and I was still in my "warm up" stage. So I continued running and enjoying the peaceful weather and LSD. My pace was wonderful and I felt really good until about mile 7. That was the first point during the run that I was thinking when is this gonna be over! There were quite a few hills around this part and I was getting tired...but you know races aren't everyday running and you just have to go the extra mile...literally ;D Overall, i thought the course was very nice, however, when we were running into the stadium we went through an area that smelled realy bad of car fumes, yuck! But anyway, I beat my last 10 mile race time by 8:27 since my pace went from 9:24 to 8:33min/mile!!!! I'm so proud of myself :D

Mile 1: 8:48.8
Mile 2: 8:20.3
Mile 3: 8:21.7
Mile 4: 8:29.7
Mile 5: 8:30.6
Mile 6: 8:37.5
Mile 7: 8:43.6
Mile 8: 8:29.1
Mile 9: 8:52.0
Mile 10: 8:29.2
Unofficial time: 1:25:42 (I started the time early and stopped late)

Official Time: 1:25:28
Pace: 8:33min/mile

Waterfall Glen

I had a really nice easy run last night at Waterfall Glen. It's a forest preserve that surrounds Argonne National Laboratory. I had never been there before; I have to say it is very nice from the little bit I saw. I walked and jogged about 3/4 mile out and then "raced" back. 

Btw...tomorrow is the big race!

Two tickets for the "Hot Tamale Train"

Last night I went to run my 5 miles....someone was on my treadmill and was boguarding the fan. Booo! It gets pretty hot in the workout room when you are running for 40 minutes :( I ended up running 4.5 miles. Wow I feel like I keep letting myself down. But then when I am all sore the next day i know there was a reason I needed to stop.

Last night I also stopped at Fleet Feet and got my bib and t-shirt. However, they had not received the technical shirts yet so they gave me a cotton one and said they would mail the technical one to me. Kinda lame, but I got an extra t-shirt out of the deal.

In other news, So You Think You Can Dance starts today! I really liked that show last year. I will probably miss it tonight though :(

I must confess...my 4 mile run I was planning on doing last night only ended up being 2.7miles. I got home, made dinner and was really looking forward to my run. I ended up rushing myself so much that I couldn't really get control of my breathing plus I had just finished eating. It was a painful run, but since I pushed myself pretty hard it felt like I ran closer to 4 miles anyway :p

Today I feel great! I was planning on waking up early to pick up a Wii Fit for a B-day present for my sister, but instead a friend was nice enough to pick one up at a 24hr Wal-mart at midnight. I was worried about being able to get one by this weekend so it really took some stress off of me. Hopefully the Wii Fit is as fun as the old Nintendo Power Pad...I remember playing this game Athletic World :D (PS: It was recently announced by Bandai Namco that this game will see a remake in Japan in 2008 for the Wii, renamed in North America as Active Life)

Now tonight I get to go pick up my bib and t-shirt for the race Saturday. I have to go all the way up to Fleet Feet Piper's Alley. It's pretty far north for me to drive after work (traffic sucks!), but I have not been to Fleet Feet before and have been looking forward to checking it out. Hopefully I do not get home too late...I must have time for a full 5 mile run, hehe.

Oh ya I maybe found a few people to run with...in the suburbs. We'll see how it goes tomorrow ;)

Prospect

I did a little search for my time on the 10 mile race I did last June (1:33:55, 9:24min/mile) just to see what I'm up against. I think this is how it is for many runners, you are usually racing against your previous times and not someone else. Although I do find it helpful to pick someone in a race and say...I wanna beat her ;)

I'm hoping that I will be able to maintain a 9 min/mile pace for the race on Saturday. I really don't know what to expect though...so much depends on weather and how I am feeling that morning. Eeeeee I can't wait :D

Tonight I will do a 4 mile run, yayy!

iPhone Blogging

Woo hoo I have figured out how to blog from my iPhone :) Looks like
this page is gonna fill up fast!

Here is a picture from a morning run. I am so close to lake
Michigan...just a quick 5 minute jog away. I'm not sure if I can ever
give this up...

I'm BACKKKK

Well really I wasn't ever gone. I have been running, but I have just been too busy to blog. I am still busy, but I really need to keep track of my times as races are quickly approaching! In fact I have a 10 mile race Saturday morning...yikes! I have been taking running pretty easy lately and running only 3 miles or so about 3 times a week. That is not enough!!!! I took time yesterday to do an 8 mile run (just to see how bad the 10 mile is going to hurt). It went surprisingly well considering the lack of training going on here. I went at a nice slow pace (9 min/mile) and took a short walk at 4.5 miles so that I could eat some sport beans. It ended up taking me 73:12 to finish. I am planning on running 4, 5, and 3 miles this week with a rest day on Friday. We'll see how the 10 mile goes this weekend!

If you haven't noticed I have also changed the address of this blog. I figure that I would like to post things outside of running once in awhile...no reason to have two blogs.