Wonderful 7-Miler

This morning when the alarm went off at 5:30, I hoped out of bed more enthusiastically than I expected.  I got all my stuff together last night so getting ready was pretty easy.  My husband even got up to see me off, I felt special.  I headed out the door and immediately saw that it was sprinkling.  I took a second to debate going in to get my other pair of headphones (my other pair is water resistant and I wasn't sure if the rain would get harder) but decided to just go and hope that the rain didn't get harder.

It was a beautiful morning for a run.  I was enjoying myself so much that I got almost a mile in before I realized that I hadn't started my stopwatch.  I was a little sad about not being able to be certain about my pace, but I knew I had the tools to do the math and approximate it (assuming a constant pace) when I got home.  So I started my watch and kept going.  It drizzled the whole way, pretty much the perfect drizzle.  Just enough to keep me cool and the humidity down but not enough to interfere with my vision or even soak me through.  I also really enjoyed having the water bottle with me.  It was nice to be able to drink on the long run, although I mostly drank at the end and mostly be sure I was hydrated.

I really enjoyed the entire run.  I never really felt exhausted or worn out and probably could have kept going when I got the end of my run if I needed to.  I am not sure what made this run so good but if all of my long runs were like this one, I wouldn't have any problems getting them done.  Based on my approximations, I covered the 7 miles in 1:33:51, which gave me a 13:24 mile, only 9 seconds slower per mile than my 5 miler last week.  Last week I was tired and breathing heavy at the end, but this week that was not the case so I will gladly take the extra 9 seconds per mile to keep me feeling good at the end of a run.

I did learn on this run that I probably should invest in some body glide.  I have a raw spot under each arm where my bare skin rubbed against my shirt as I swung my arms.  It isn't horrible, just sensitive, but if I had to run longer, it would probably hurt pretty bad.  Good to figure this out on a training run rather than at the race.

For breakfast I had a modified version of my pre-race breakfast.  I had two pieces of toast, one with nutella and one with peanut butter and mini chocolate chips and a cup of grapes.  I also had some milk and more water.  It was very satisfying.

My breakfast!

I spent the rest of the morning making sure I was ready to teach Sunday School tomorrow, doing my last "catch up" bible study and doing some digitizing for my husband.  After lunch I had a nice long nap and I then I went with my husband with the intention of helping him work through some microfilm.

When we got to his office on campus, we found that the code he punched in to try and get into the office didn't work. We tried several times with no luck.  Unfortunately, the stuff I was going to work through was in the office. I had fortunately brought something with me to work on since there wasn't anything I was able to do for my husband.

Since I was a bit bored, I started texting a friend of mine and ended up deciding to meet her for this painting class she was doing.  I went mostly because I wanted to spend some time with her and I ended up having a great time and making a decent painting to boot.  I am no Michelangelo, Rembrandt or Picasso but I thought it didn't turn out half bad.

My not too bad Christmas in July painting (that was the night's theme).

My friend drove me home (since my husband dropped me off) and then I did last last little things, had some tea and went to bed,