Fact: My half marathon is in 54 days.
Fact: I was sidelined waiting for my back to heal for 5 weeks
Fact: I’ve been not eating well and have been a little willy nilly with my training plan
Fact: My best friend got married this past weekend and and I had a bunch of other things to take care of last week and didn’t sleep enough. Instead of running I chose sleep a couple of times last week.
Fact: Tonight I ran 5 miles.

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Sorry. Can’t help it. I love Ben Wyatt and I love that .gif!

The final tally was 5 miles. In 1 hour 13 minutes 24 seconds. I ran 6 bridges over the Charles. I ran into 1 co-worker. And I was attacked by 4 mosquitoes. This is the furthest I’ve run since March of 2012 when I ran a St. Patrick’s day race. And to be honest, it doesn’t really feel like I ran 5 miles. It feels like I ran 2.5.

In my rush to leave this morning I forgot to grab my Garmin. Before the run I bought myself a hand held water bottle. It’s still hot out in the evenings and I’ve been told by a coach that it’s better to run without holding anything. It had a pocket for my phone and car key. For my run I threw my phone in the pocket and started my plain old digital watch’s stop watch. I ran 4 minute intervals with 1 minute walking in between. Maybe it was just a really nice night for a run. Maybe the paths along the Charles are just that intoxicating. Or maybe for most of the run I was just running: no pressure for pace. I knew that it would take about an hour and 15 minutes to run 5 miles and so that’s what I asked of myself. And instead of seeing what little distance I covered every time I checked the time, I just ran what I could; what my body could handle.

Do I care that I’m still walking way more than I want to? Nope
Am I freaking out about adding a whole additional mile in just five days? A little
Am I going to be a little sore in the morning? Probably (though 45 minutes on the bike at 6:30 should shake that right out)
Does it feel awesome-sauce to look at my RunKeeper map and see 5 (five!!!) mile markers? Hell yes.

It’s the little things.

Hearts and Michelle Obama thumbs up! (PS Did you hear she’s coming out with a rap album to help get kids to get up and move?? I can’t decide if it’s awesome or will out shine Barack Obama’s dad jeans in the embarassing national parent category)

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