Run Recaps

Since I have been so busy with my grad school app, I haven't had a chance to go over my recent training runs.  I won't go back over all of the ones that I have missed, just the last two.  I had my long run on Saturday morning.  Since I hadn't really thought about it on Friday, I had no plans to actually run on Saturday morning, despite the fact that I knew it would be the smart thing to do.  Saturday morning I woke up and laid in bed reading my Facebook updates and reading some news articles on my phone trying to avoid the inevitable decision: was I running today??  Even my Nike Sportwatch wanted to know!

Eventually, I dragged myself out of bed, prompted by the fact that I didn't want it to get any later before actually going running.  There was some bargaining involved (IF you go running, you don't have to do all 5 miles...IF you go running, you'll be able to have more drinks while watching football if you want...and so on...) but mostly, I just forced myself to handle it that old familiar way: take it one step at a time.  Get dressed, put my hair up, put my shoes on, get in the car, drive to the trailhead, etc.  I decided to run on the West Orange Trail because I wasn't really sure of a great 5 mile run around my neighborhood, plus I wanted something a little different!

BY THE NUMBERS:

Total Distance: 5.03 miles
Total Time: 1 hr. 7 mins
Average pace: 13 mins 27 secs

Now, I have to explain something.  Since I've started training again and I missed the first few weeks of my schedule AND I hadn't been running at all this summer, I wanted to avoid killing myself (and potentially injuring myself), so I decided to start running via the Jeff Galloway methodology.  His method has you do a run/walk for varying amounts of time.  What I've been doing is a 30 sec run and 30 sec walk and it's been pretty decent.  Next week, I think I'm going to change up the ratios a bit and make my runs longer.  While I've been following the Jeff Galloway method for the way I run, I've been following the Hal Higdon method for the distance I run as well as the activity schedule during the week.  It's early yet, but so far, so good!

During the trail run, I saw a Coral Snake!!  To you non-Florida natives, you may not really know about Coral Snakes, but they're one of the poisonous snake species down here.  I was just chugging along, running away and I look down and there it is, on the edge of the trail.  I did the old rhyme quickly in my head, "Red on yellow kills a fellow....red on yellow....is that red on yellow?  Oh my goodness, IT IS!!  AAAAAAAHHHH!" You see there are two types of snakes down here that look somewhat similarly, the Coral Snake is the poisonous species and the King Snake is the non-poisonous species.  Because of this, a helpful rhyme has been developed to help children (and adults) easily decipher which is which: "Red on yellow kills a fellow, Red on Black is a friend of Jack."  Needless to say, when you come upon a snake by surprise, these nice little rhymes seem to escape your head!  The ONLY reason I remembered so quickly was because, oddly enough, we had just been talking about these snakes at dinner the night before.  Weird little coincidence! 

Poisonous Coral Snake

Non-poisonous King Snake

Okay, so, for now I'm going to leave you guys with this entry since it's late and I need to get to bed! I'll recap my run from today in a blog posting tomorrow!

And please don't forget my run for Team ASPCA!  PLEASE DONATE to my team by following this link: Team Steph B and Steff S

Anything helps, even as little as $5.00 if that's all you can contribute!  Either way, I will be SO GRATEFUL!!  Thanks guys!