How Stella got her groove back...

Well actually how Alisa got her groove back!

Monday morning I got up bright and early and took Zoey for a short 3.25 mile run. I didn't know if I'd get time to take her for a walk or not so I wanted to make sure she got some exercise and well...look at that, so did I. Later, I ended up being able to take her for about another mile walk. Monday, feeling good!

Tuesday afternoon I went for a very impromptu, fantastic run with friend HTC. All day I felt unmotivated, bloated and tired. I was stopping by HTC’s house to return some borrowed dresses and asked her if she had gone running for the day. Secretly, I wanted her to say yes so I could go home and sit on the couch. Instead she said “no, wanna go?” How could I turn down a running buddy!?!?! Luckily, I always keep running gear in the car now. I suited up only having to borrow a long sleeve top and hair tie. Off we went for an easy 6 miles or so. I was sans Garmin, sans regular watch, sans music, sans Iphone and it felt great! The first few miles were downhill so I’d imagine we were a little faster on those miles. We did walk up the stairs to the Hawthorne bridge and we sprinted the ramp up to the Steel Bridge and took a little walk break, where we saw this blonde girl bounce by—it was Jen! She stopped to walk with us a little before we all started back up again over the Steel Bridge up through downtown. Jen left us near her place; HTC’s is another 15 blocks or so. We sporadically ran/walked through downtown as we had to stop at lights and stop signs but we made it back to HTC’s with 6ish miles of great conversation behind us.

Tonight I went to spin class with Jen. Seeing her twice in one week was a treat! I *heart* workout buddies. After spin, she was getting on the treadmill for a short run to complete a brick (i.e. A bike workout followed by a run. I’m learning the Tri language). Since she is my Tri-guru, I figured, if she’s doing it I should too. I hopped on the treadmill for a 10 minute run. My legs weren’t as tired as I thought they might be. They were more numb than heavy and tired. I wanted to do at least one mile so I set the pace at a 10:30 and sped up to a max pace of 8:XX and ended with 1.01 miles. During the run, I blasted my new fantastic “mashups” playlist curiosity of HTC. (If you like mashups visit this site: www.goodblimey.com/tunes ). I found the “Drop it like it’s been slimed” particularly entertaining; mashup between Snoop Dog and the Ghostbusters theme song. For my 80’s music lovah’s try the “Billie Jean’s Invisible Touch” mashup of Michael Jackson and Genesis (i.e. Phil Collins). (Kristen, if you’re reading this, remember BFD and Prodigy? I found a Beyonce vs. Prodigy mashup! Also, Backstreet Boys and that Tipsy song, reminds me of you, Blythe and Lauren B.)

After the brick, I was feeling overly ambitious and decided since I skipped my morning swim I would make it up tonight. I headed to the pool and before I knew it 1550 yards had gone by. After the 1550 I decided to call it a day.

I feel so fantastic right now! Tomorrow I have a tempo run on the schedule, the last before SD. I can't believe it's less than 2 weeks away. I was going through a rough patch not feeling very confident, glad I snapped out of it! I WILL get a PR in SD!

Happy Hump Day!