I feel like Wonder Woman, minus the inappropriate outfit for someone who turned 35 yesterday! This had to have been the best week I had running, and I'm pretty sure it was because it was my "easy week." It started off a little rough, but today made it all worthwhile!
So, Tuesday I roll in to the 24-Hour Fitness Shaq gym near my work. This is the location I ran at all year last school year, and it was recently expanded and refurbished. I was able to enjoy this gym until Tuesday. Little did I know, my gym membership that I had renewed the week before was no longer valid because I only had access to "all-Sport" gyms, not "all-Super Sport" gyms (of which there are 4 in the country, and with my luck, that location is one of them). I was informed that I could upgrade by paying a mere $120 more, to which I screamed, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME??" in my head while politely responding, "Uh, I don't think so. I'm a teacher, and that will not be happening." The manager could probably see the fire back-lighting my eyeballs and was kind enough to let me enjoy one last hurrah. I got on a treadmill and ran a little of the frustration out in my 2-mile run and made a 12:15-minute mile pace. Maybe being aggravated made me run a little faster...
Fast-forward to Thursday. I attended training all day (which, in itself it torture when you're used to being on your feet most of the day), then worked at my school for two hours with student registration. Apparently, my brain was still a bit in "summer" mode when I spoke with a certain student. I won't bore you with the details here, but let me just say that I've been kicking myself ever since and am fervently praying that I haven't completely soured this poor student towards me or the institute of education. Anyway, after my brief moment of "athlete's tongue", I picked up the boys, headed home, made & ate dinner, took care of dishes, and then continued the "kicking myself" process on the treadmill at the gym location that will still welcome me (thank you 24-Hour Fitness in Friendswood!). Once again, irritation helped fuel another sub-13-minute mile pace, but this time it was a tad slower at 12:35-minute mile. I think exhaustion & running after dinner for the first time didn't have as bad of an affect on me as I thought. I still like running right after work because once I get home, I can stay put!
Now, the moment you've all been waiting for: today's "long" run! Because it was an "easy week", I only had to run 5 miles. I decided to try out the new RunKeeper app on my phone. Unfortunately, because the park I ran in had so many trees, it couldn't log as I went. I had a back-up plan in mind in case that happened. I just used the timer on my phone to keep track of the time so that all I had to do was keep track of my laps. I decided to skip the slower songs as they came up on my MP3 player, and I think that made a difference. It also gave me a personal homework assignment to put only faster songs on it for the future (thank you, Mark Wiesenborn for the idea!). So, ten laps and five miles later, I looked at my clock. It read one hour and four minutes. I quickly switched to my RunKeeper app to input my run and was ecstatic to find out that I had kept at 12:57-minute mile pace! I probably looked like a complete wacko, fist pumping and hopping up and down like I had won the lottery, but I didn't care. I finally did it! I broke that crazy 13-minute mile road block! The true test of success will come next week, with a full week of teaching & an eight-mile run on Saturday. We'll just have to see how the week pans out...
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