Two ends of the spectrum

If you only take one thing away from this post, let it be that my sister updated her blog with her baby story, and even better, all sorts of adorable baby pictures! I wouldn't hold it against anyone if you abandoned my boring running talk now to go look at that instead.

Also, as I strive for accuracy here on my blog, I wanted to address some of the comments that I got a few weeks ago saying that my life was "exciting". Yes, there was that one weekend that included a triathlon, a wedding, and meeting my new nephew/BFF/favorite person ever. But here's a look into my most recent Friday night, which is far closer to a typical one in my world.

Yup - living the high life, right here.

Now, my weekend wasn't boring by any means. I sampled this new kind of chocolate from Trader Joes on Thursday, and got hooked on it. Sounds gross, tastes amazing. Too bad I already ate it all.  Salt? Good. Pepper? Good. Chocolate? Good.

Everything tastes better when eaten in a leopard print snuggie.

As for the most exciting part of the weekend, I'm sure we can all agree on that one.

My friend Kristin brought it right to my door for me. Life does not get better than that. Eric and I both had to work last night, so we are super excited to watch it together tonight.

Naturally, this begs the question that I'm sure is on the forefront of all of your minds. Which Hunger Games shirt do I wear to commemorate such an important day?

After much deliberation, I choose the Girl on Fire shirt for Saturday, and the Peeta/Finnick one for Sunday. I may work in a casual running store, but I thought promoting skinny dipping might have been crossing the line.

With that settled, let's discuss some running. When I tell people I'm training for a 50 mile race, a lot of times they want to know how far I run for my long runs, expecting something like 35 or 40 miles. Which would make sense, given that most people train up to or at least close to the distance of their target race (ex., for a marathon you'd run up to 20 or 22 miles before the race). Ultra running can be tricky though, because most people can't just run 40 miles on Saturday and be ready for another tough week of training on Monday (or at least, I can't). There's a fine line between getting in high mileage, but not making it so high that the recovery time hinders you. Also, most ultra runners are regular people with jobs and families and things to do, so running for 10 hours  straight every Saturday just isn't realistic.

To compromise, the ultra plans that I'm following have each long run followed by a long-ish run, usually 8-12 miles, the next day, so you are still getting in something close to 30 miles on the weekends, just not all at once.

I decided to mix things up this week and do my planned 20 miler on Friday morning before work. Ashley recently posted about how she's been doing that during this training cycle, so I figured I'd try it. It was supposed to storm Saturday morning anyway, and I've really been struggling to get up and run while it's cool(er) without a specific deadline to make.

It ended up being great. I woke up at 3:30, started at 4, and enjoyed the first few hours in the cool darkness. Even when the sun came up, it still was far from that hot, torturous, I'm going to melt you into the sidewalk feeling. 

I took the run at a nice, slow pace (10:08) and even had the energy to bike to work when I was done.

Of course, the school year hasn't begun for the kids yet, so I didn't really have to talk to anyone or act professional. I could get by doing tasks like taking about 900 of these stacks

Foot provided for size reference

into this.

 

And turning this hot mess

into these. 

I'm not sure I could handle doing the long run during the week when I actually have to supervise kids using all this stuff, on top of, um, teaching all day. Time will tell. 

But when Saturday morning rolled around, sleeping in until 9am felt amazing and was well worth it. I went over to the other side of the running start time spectrum and lounged around drinking coffee and reading until noon, when I finally did my 10 miles. 

Which would you rather do on Friday night - a crowded, wild bar or reading a book? I'd like the middle ground, drinking wine with Eric and some friends at home, but that wasn't an option for me this week, so it's not an option in this blog question either. 

What's the earliest you've ever woken up to run?

What weird food combination do you love?