13...is a magic number...

Hey Alice...where the heck ya been?

Short answer...DramaGirl turned 13 this week on Tuesday. She has soccer. Turbo plays football. I teach two night classes. The class I team-teach at State started this week (I'm doing the online portion), so I had to get that all set up. A busy week...

Last night, DramaGirl had a slumber party. They looked like they were having a fine time, what with all the pizza, and soda, and chips, and candy (and cake!) that they could possibly consume. I think several of them were up as late as 2am. I heard later this morning, that a couple were up until 4am. This is what they looked like when I left at 7am...They swore they were going to "pull an all-nighter."


This was the "snack table." I told them I was really quite disappointed in their snack consumption.


In any event, I left them all in Walter's care to run this morning. He is a much better morning person than I am. He also makes pancakes, which the girls loved....

So, I got in my weekly long-run at Harbor Island w/Betty. I had time to run only one other day this week so it wasn't pretty, but it's done. Here are the stats...

10.12 - miles

1:58:54 - total time
11:43 - pace

Like I said, it wasn't pretty. All I know is that I'm going to HAVE to get in a couple more mid-week runs every week if I'm going to be ready for the Nike Women's Half in (check countdown widget at right). YIKES.

The training plan that I've been following for 1/2 marathons in the past, never has me running either by time, or by distance, anything more than 11 miles. After the AFC 1/2 I started to wonder about this. It seems like a fine strategy for marathon training (why would anyone run a marathon other than at a marathon?) but for shorter races, I wonder if this is the best course of action for me. At the RnR marathon, when I went past the 1/2 Marathon mark, I felt great! Of course, in the weeks prior to the marathon, I'd been running 13+ miles, every weekend, for several weeks, so 13 was no big deal.

For the AFC 1/2, the farthest I'd run was 11.5 miles...and I was exhausted by then (of course, there was that heat and humidity...but still).

The training plan by Nike for the Nike Women's 1/2 recommends runs of 13 and 14 miles a month before the marathon, so with that in mind, I think for the next two weeks, I'll run 2.5 hours (at least 13 - 14 miles, depending on how fast I'm running that morning), then I'll taper to a 1.5 hour run, three weeks out, 2 hours two weeks out, an hour run one week out. I also want to get one or two good runs in on hills. Starting this week, I'm going to be able to make it to the Tuesday night workouts with the track club, so I believe there'll be some hill workouts there as well.

I should be prepared.

So that's all I got today. Sorry if I bored you silly, but I've got no funny stories to tell. It was a pretty uneventful run this morning.

We did see a washed up, eyes missing, stingray on the running path...that was new...most of the harbor area this morning just STANK...garbage and fish...not new, but smelled worse than normal, probably the humidity...there was tons of garbage from the Midway Aircraft Carrier, which is open to the public and thus has a "snack bar" at the aft (I'm SUCH a boat person you know...I can use nautical terminolgy with the best of them...musta been those two cruises I've been on...yeah, that's it). The amount of trash in the bay, which I'm pretty sure had blown off the Midway, was both surprising and dissapointing. The Midway has been there for awhile, and I've run past it several times. This is the first time I remember noticing the amount of garbage around it...sad.

My first mega-yaght, the Princess Mariana was not longer in port, but my second mega-yaght, Ice, was...not as showy as the Princess, but it'll do.

Have a great week. I've got about 50 blogs to read this afternoon, but I think I need a nap right now...you know, to recover from the slumber party.