Pre-CDR

Headed to Charleston, WV in a few hours!  Running the Charleston Distance Run bright and early tomorrow morning.  Last year I came in 6th place after pushing a wall for the entire, boring, completely flat, 2nd half of the race.  I'm hoping that this year somehow the flat doesn't hurt quite so bad and that I manage to finish top 5.  Also, I want my pace to be less than 7 min/mile.  I pulled a 7:15 average last year.  I didn't run much this week, had an adventurous run on Monday that left my legs feeling dead on Tuesday, so Wednesday I just went for a light jog, and then took Thursday and today off.  I would have preferred Wednesday off and a jog on Thursday, but Thursday was a busy day so I decided that it would have to be my day off.  I'm ok with taking 2 days off before a race, but I'm not willing to take 3 days off before a race.

This week (so far)

M: 6.03 / 45:21 / 7:31 w/Josh

T: 4.83 / 36:24 / 7:32

W: 3.65 / 33:01 / 9:02

total : 14.51

Monday's run involved running down a country road on which reside some vicious sheep dogs.  I knew they were there because I used to keep my horse next door, but let Josh talk me into running partway down the road before we turned around cause we were trying to get a 6 miler and we didn't want to turn around too soon. We figured we could turn around before the dogs would decide we were trying to steal their sheep.  Turns out, they didn't wait for us to get close.  They started coming for us as soon as they laid eyes on us.  And chased us a good ways back up the road.  Luckily we saw them as soon as they headed towards us so we booked it and kept our lead for a little while, long enough that by the time they got close were were pretty far away from their field.  A little yelling got them to back off while we kept running, and eventually they changed their minds and went back home.  I'm pretty sure they realized we were in better shape than they were and got tired...haha.

Wednesday my goal was to jog since I knew my legs were tired and I didn't want to overdo it.  I had no idea that I was going as slow as a 9 min/mile pace though!  That might be a new jogging record for me...hard to believe that only a few years ago that pace was fast for me...  Now I usually can't go that slow if I try.  This summer is going down as the summer I learned how to jog.  I've been noticing lately that the faster my race times get, the slower my training runs get.  Guess I don't mind as long as the race times keep getting faster!

In other news, here are some photos that I took in the last week:

I went out to the barn this morning and discovered some spiders that I did NOT want to know existed in the same space where I have been known to practically fall asleep in the grass.  They were everywhere!

And here are some pictures from the barn a few days ago.  

A day where there were NO nasty spiders in sight.

 I think it would hurt if I turned my neck like that.

Last night we had our back to school picnic.  It POURED rain for most of it.

Or as they say around here..."it poured the rain."

The kids had so much fun, it's gonna be hard to top it for the rest of the year.

 there were a couple of rainbows, but I had a lot of trouble getting them to come through in pictures

I'll have to work on that