I cheated, but I'm back

I seriously just had the best run. Waiting until after school seemed like a horrible decision until I actually started, and then it turned out to be awesome. Running in daylight without crazy weather feels like I've won the lottery these days. After I warmed up, I decided to try not to look at the Garmin 8  million times and adjust my pace, but to just go by feeling.
And the feeling I was going for was pushing it, a notch below "feels like I'm about to keel over". My body just naturally wants to run at that comfortable, conversational pace so I literally am constantly telling myself "speed up!".

Enjoying running on the treadmill sort of felt like I was cheating on my boyfriend (running outside, for this analogy). Today was the day where I fessed up, and realized how good I'd had it with him all along. The treadmill gets the job done, but running outside is just glorious.

I thought about taking the camera and taking pictures like I've seen a lot of bloggers do, but I can only assume you all have middle class neighborhoods with sidewalks and rush hour traffic where you live so you know what they look like. I'm jealous of everyone who runs in picture worthy places though.

My tempo pace is supposed to be 8:18 to 8:39 (according to McMillan). After a mile warmup (9:37), I did 6 tempo miles, and here's the times.
8:03
8:23
8:11
8:45
8:42
8:33
Followed by a cooldown mile in 10:22.
I am pretty much thrilled with this, and I feel like it really means I am getting faster. Even though miles 4 and 5 were above the target pace, they involved a huge hill (and there was some wind).  Plus there wasn't any cursing, which is an improvement from my last outdoor tempo run.

Now the random reason I am excited:

A long time ago I was reading Kath Eats, and she ran 7 miles in an hour. For some reason that totally stuck with me, and I've always wanted to do it. I know its a super weird random goal, but whatever. I mean, its not like I stitched it on a pillow for my mantel and dedicated my life's work to it or anything, but times I have run 7 miles I've thought about it.

So anyway, when I was obsessively looking at my Garmin during mile 6 to see when I could stop, I noticed when I got to 7 miles. And if you have a Garmin and you're a psycho like me, you know there is like 2 seconds from when you hit the mile mark to when it tells you how fast the mile was run. So while I was waiting to see that, the time turned to one hour, which meant that I finished the 7 miles in just under an hour!! And for some reason, I was super excited that I had met that random thought/goal/not really a goal. Ok now I sound like a real weirdo.

 I made myself a great new playlist last night. I love my ipod touch, you can download songs and make a playlist right on the ipod - no computer involved!

 Couldn't have done the run without my camelbak! Hydration!

 This is what it would look like if I were going for a run in the guest room.

I've been a major slacker with stretching, but today I got in a nice long stretch after my run. Why? Because I had a ton of grad work waiting for me when I was done. 

Nothing makes me do something I've been procrastinating on like all of the sudden needing to procrastinate on something I want to do even less. This weekend I need to write a paper so I'm pretty sure my sock drawer will be organized by Monday.

Last randomness of the night - weird but surprisingly awesome dinner. After I finally finished my assignment it was like 8pm, my run was over at 6 so I was ready to take a bite out of my laptop, so dinner was brought to me by yank whatever is in the fridge out and put it together.. I baked a sweet potato and topped half of it with this scrumptious salsa left that Sarah made for the superbowl party, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, avocado, and frank's red hot. Crazy, shocking, unbelievable, but delicious.

I know it looks gross, but trust me.

Eric texted me during this hunger craze and said he was going to Chik - Fil - A and offered to get me a milkshake, but I declined. He's drank more than 80% of his without me even having a taste, so I've officially exercised and used up my willpower for the year.