Graham corrected my running form so I run like I'm running on parallel lines. This causes me to feel like I have something stuck up my butt, but makes it so the pressure goes to the outside of my feet and my toes are more splayed apart. I have been consciously running like this during my last two runs and it's not actually slowed my pace at all like Graham predicted. I have actually had the best two runs I have had in a long time. Tomorrow I will run 26K without my orthotics. I will just focus on my form and see what happens.
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| The top run was from Saturday on country roads in Millbrook...my last split was 6:48. The bottom run was from this morning. My 8:33 kilometer was because I stopped to talk to someone and failed to pause my run. |
So I postponed my long run from today until tomorrow. I'm not too thrilled about it, but I had to do what I had to do. Bottom line is that hubby and I are getting into further and further distances. If we both did our long runs on the same day, we'd be running about 5 hours combined. And it will just get worse. His longest run will get to 20K, mine 32K. So since he skipped a run yesterday, I gracefully gave him a long run day today, and postponed my long run until tomorrow. I will wake up at 7am to drink my energy drink (3 scoops of powder) before heading out to complete 2x 10K loops and 1x 6K loop around the city. I will be running for over three hours. Sounds so daunting to be doing alone...but at least I'll have my regular morning show on Q-107 to listen to. And next weekend? I get to scale back to 19K before going up to 29K the following weekend. Kill me now.
We headed up to Millbrook on Friday to spend a couple of days with my cousin (on my dad's side) and his family. Julien was super excited because we camped on my cousin's property. They have 150 acres of farm land, that they actually farm. They also have 4 horses. We brought Finn with us who was completely in his element. I felt guilty bringing him back to the city. He's been a bit depressed ever since he's been home. Although I know he'd love living in the country, Julien would never let us part with him. Finn will just have to be a country dog at heart.
My eating has been spot on the past few days. My cousin's wife was awesome. She called before we headed up and asked about the Paleo diet. There was not any processed carbs, refined sugar, legumes or dairy to be seen while we were visiting. She was waaaaaaay more hard core than I am at my house. When I make dinner for guests, I make food we can all eat, but I also prepare dishes just for my guests. I would have had no issue if she made stuff I wouldn't eat. My dad came with us and he loves his bread, potatoes and sweets. I felt a little bad for him! Oh well, the effort she made was completely awesome. I was not expecting such a strict diet while I was there.
I went for a run with her Saturday morning. She's training for a 10K race at the beginning of October. We did her long run yesterday which was 7K. Running country roads is not a walk in the park. The scenery is lovely, but man is it hilly! I also did walk breaks with her. So all in all we ran at a pretty clipped pace. I didn't stop my app for walk breaks so a 6:46 kilometer was pretty admirable. If you look at the splits (above), you can see the two kilometers that had the particularly large hills.
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| Top: brunch Bottom: dinner |
I decided to try and "carb load" before my long run tomorrow and see if it makes a difference in my performance. Okay, so I'm not so much carb loading as having a couple of extra carby things than usual. I had TWO sweet potatoes today (I'd have to have about 7 for it to be considered actual carb loading). One for brunch and one for dinner. Brunch was bacon (a real treat) and eggs with sliced tomato, sweet potato and cantaloupe (not pictured). Dinner was BBQ'd sausages, sauteed green pepper and onion, Italian kale and sweet potato. I have had so much water today that I have been visiting the bathroom every 1.5 hours. It's VERY important to hydrate the day before a run.
Since I'm up at 7 am tomorrow to head out for my long run, I'm off to bed. If you have to do something tomorrow morning that you dread, remember I'll be running from about 7:30 till about 10:45 depending on how my toes make out. Just think of me and that should make you feel better. I leave you with some photos from our "camping" trip to Millbrook.
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| See the cute barn kitten.? There's a mama and five babies living in the barn. |
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| Julien and his cousin off-roading. |
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| Julien and his other cousin having fun at the Peterborough Zoo. |
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| Fun on the merry-go-round. |
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| Julien and Joey. |
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| Some super cute kids checking out the monkeys! |
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| He looks angry. I definitely did not cross that barrier... |