>This week has been strange. I’ve really been missing Aaron. We haven’t been able to talk on Skype or on Facebook chat, just the phone. Every couple minutes we lose the call. So incredibly frustrating. And after having three days off last week, it was challenging to get back into working eight hours a day with my friend at school. I had something to do every evening this week, which is almost always the case, but it was exhausting.

This morning I got up around 7 and left the house by 8:10-8:15 for the trail run at Wildlife Prairie Park. I parked and got my packet, which included a CITRA (Central Illinois Trail Running Alliance) hat and a couple of gift certificates to a chiropractor’s office. Gabriela didn’t run today because she’s been sick. 😦 Not sure she would have wanted to listen to my attitude though! 😉

They sang the national anthem and with the gun we were off. The first third of a mile or so was on a paved service road. Then we turned onto the Flood Plain Trail. They had said we’d be running in ankle deep snow. Try twelve inches of snow, not the least bit packed down. Most of us ended up hiking it.

It was rough. My attitude was horrible. I was looking forward to racing this thing, and here I was doing 18-20 minute miles out in the middle of nowhere. Whine, whine, whine, I know. But srsly.

The last probably half mile was decent to run, so I ran it and finished in about 1:09:10. Not sure on the seconds. According to my Polar watch, I burned 840 calories, and my heart rate hit 185 as a max but for the average was 161. Not bad if you ask me for a cross-training workout.

Mainly what I thought about the whole time since I purposely didn’t take music with me, was “If I get injured because of this I will be so mad!”

So anyway. Here’s what my training looks like from this week:


Monday: 4 mi, 9:13 pace (my fastest yet!!)
Tuesday: 7 mi, 10:31 pace
Wednesday: cross-training since I forgot some of my very important running gear (read: a specific undergarment!)
Thursday: 3 mi, 11:09 pace (got my tush outta bed at 4:50 and went before work)
Friday: rest
Saturday: 3.7 mi, 18:35 pace
Sunday: 12.37 mi, 11:25 pace… can’t seem to shake that darn 11 when running a long distance like that. I was also trying to not douse myself in yucky melted snow and dodging cars. The sky was so blue and it was warm-ish out (45 for Illinois in February is a heat wave!). I wore long pants, a cami, a long sleeve tech shirt and an ear band. The wind was at 15 MPH, so I knew my ears would probably get cold. And the ear band helps keep my headphones in (Aaron accidentally packed my iPod ones and they’re now 6000 miles away). My Nike+ iPod thing kept screwing up, but I think I got the mileage right. I’m so glad I went and got ‘er dun.. I feel a lot better physically and emotionally.

So, I pride myself on having nice feet. I looooove sandals and being barefoot. But I got my first big blister… ever… from running so darn much. And it was a water blister. Hopefully my toenails don’t fall off; I’ve heard of that happening to long distance runners. I like to keep them really short, so I hope that doesn’t happen!

Calories burned for the week according to sparkpeople.com: 4800!! and 30 miles!

And a good thing too since I ate a lot.

I’d say I had a pretty successful week of training. My apartment is a mess, but my head is mostly clear. I’ll take it.

Oh, here’s a map of the trail we ran.