So, it’s Monday. You know — the day when everyone goes back to work, well, I guess except me.  I could be at work right now, but that would have required me to wait in my car for one more hour after I had already been waiting for an hour.  I’m used to waiting in my car for a half hour to forty-five minutes before someone with a key can unlock the building and let me in, but apparently, the main organization that is based in the same building as mine where I have my internship decided to take Friday and today off.  My boss failed to notify me of this on Wednesday when she allowed me to work from home on Thursday and take Friday off for the 4th.  So, there I sat for an hour and fifteen minutes waiting for someone to come unlock the door until I realized there was a piece of paper on the side of the window that notified me of the building closure. Perfect. I texted my boss to see what time she would be in and she said it would be around 10.  Yeah, not going to happen.  I was on the phone with my friend at the time, and she and I both decided that I might as well just go home.  The cheese of my sandwich for lunch  was already melting down the side of my bread because I refuse to waste gas for air conditioning when I can crack and window and suck it up for a half hour or so, but the hour and fifteen minutes had obviously taken a toll on my sandwich.  Boo. So, here I am, at home on Monday.  It’s not like I’m missing out on money, since it’s a volunteer internship and all, but a phone call would have been nice before I woke up at 5am to run and workout so I could make it to work on time.

OK. Enough about the extra day off.  My run this morning was perfect.  I love the way a rest day makes you feel. Well, it’s nice until you get to Tuesday and they’re not near as fresh as they were the day before.  But, it was an awesome run. Seven miles of effortless knee driving and arm swinging.  This morning was I more brave than I have been all summer and ran in just a sport bra.  I haven’t seen anyone exercise without a shirt around here — not even guys in 100 degree heat on my way home from work, but after reading an article in Runner’s World about wearing as little clothing as possible, I decided to suck it up and ditch the shirt.  The sleeveless shirts I wear are always drenched with sweat by the time I get done anyway, so all they are doing is traping the heat on my body and adding more weight for me to carry around.  I was much cooler than I normally am.  That may have been due to the fact that it was 72 degrees out and not 79-80 like it normally is, but I don’t care. I’ll take it. Yay for the little amount of rain we did get yesterday/last night. 

One good thing about not working today is that I get to meet the Fiance for lunch! I don’t know where we’re going, but more than likely it will be Mexican.  I can eat Mexican all day everyday.  I love chimichangas and burritos and enchiladas and taco salad… OK, I love it all — add a little sour cream and guacamole and mmm mmm. Ha. I’ll probably head about once this episode of Gilmore Girls is over at 11. I love that show, probably because Lorelei and Rory’s humor is exactly like mine. If only I had all seven or however many season there are on DVD…

Alright. I feel a little bit better about the internship thing. After all, it is another day off and adding to my practically five-day weekend. Yeah. Be jealous, but more than likely most people are getting paid for the work they’re doing this summer, unlike me. Happy Monday!

Well, almost pefect.  My day yesterday, Saturday, started by my alarm going off at 5:30am.  Yeah, the noise that warns you that if you don’t get your butt out of bed right now you’re going to regret running in the Texas heat.  Since the fiance and I planned on doing nothing Friday night because we were going out for the 4th, I called it a night around 1o o’clock on Friday, so waking up wasn’t near as terrible as it has been in the past few weeks.  I am happy to report that the tightness in my legs is almost completely gone — I’d say 95%. Woo hoo! My long run of nine miles felt pretty good.  I was struggling at mile seven because it was already 83 degrees with 76% humidity, so needless to say I was in desperate need of some water and cooling off.  It would be an understatement to say that I sweat “a lot.”  When I get done running after forty-five minutes or so, I am so drenched in sweat that I can wring sweat out of my sport bra, shorts, and socks.  Yeah.  My shoes were so wet yesterday that it sounded like I had been running in the rain.  Gross? Yes.  Do I really care about the looks and comments anymore? Nope. I guess you get immune after five years or so.  Anyways, my “long” run was a success.  I hit 42 miles this past week, which makes that the first over forty week since April when I finished track early for my trip to the UK.  I’m going to top myself at 50 miles a week at the end of the summer.  I want eight miles a day and a ten mile plus long run to feel smooth and strong, and if I can do that, I don’t see how it won’t be a good season.

Before the fiance and I headed to the Rangers game, we watched eight consecutive episodes of The Secret Life of the American Teenager.  I started watching the show when it first started in the beginning of last summer, but other priorities got in the way and I lost track of it.  I’ve started watching it again this summer, so I bought the entire first season on DVD because it was only $20.  The fiance actually likes watching it with me, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it. Yeah, the kids are young and it is an ABC Family show, but their acting is pretty terrible and sometimes the awkwardness of certain scenes makes me never want to watch it again. Sigh. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

We finally started our journey over to Arlington around 5 o’clock.  We get our tickets on-line because we didn’t know what the crowd would be like, and we didn’t want to get stuck sitting in the sun for the hour leading up to the game until the sun went down.  Our seats were pretty sweet.  We ended up being the front row of our “tier” I guess you could call it, so we didn’t have to worry about leg room since there was no one in front of us to worry about.  If it wasn’t 101 degrees out until 8 o’clock, I don’t think I could have been anymore comfortable to sit and not get out of my chair for over three hours.   The Rangers played the Devil Rays, and it was an awesome game to watch if you were rooting for the Rangers.  My man, Andruw Jones, who came from my used-to-be favorite team until they traded everyone I liked, the Atlanta Braves, hit a three run homer in the first inning.  He ended the game with a total of four RBI’s for the night and hit the ball deep in the outfield for fly balls if he did get out, so I was pretty stoked about that.  The Devil Rays went through three pitchers in the first five innings, so needless to say they where having a pretty rough day at the ballpark.  The Rangers ended up walking away with the win 12-4.  What’s a better way the spend the 4th of July than observing America’s greatest past time — baseball! It did make me miss softball.  I played for seven years and gave it up when the high school I moved to sucked the fun out of the sport, well, the coach did anyway.  Once he retired, they ended up getting second at the state tournament. A sign perhaps? I’ll let you decide.  Anyways, after the game were the fireworks.  They put on a good show, and they managed to sync a lot of the fireworks with the music.  The one that had a circle with a heart inside it was my favorite. Ha. After waiting in traffic for what seemed like forever, we finally made it home around 11:30.  It was a quick shower and bedtime for this girl after a 5:30 wake-up call. 

The fiance and I are going to enjoy a lazy day around the apartment today.  We made a trip to Barnes and Noble so I could pick up the August issue of Runner’s World, and he got his issue of TopGear.  We also picked up a couple of Bibles.  He has been wanting to start reading it again and I have always started but never finished parts, so hopefully having my own Bible will get me reading it more often.  With a new magazine to read, a rest day on the schedule,  and it raining off and on all day, I think it’s the making for a perfect lazy day.  I’m going to enjoy it while I can.  Tomorrow’s Monday again…

Where has the first half of my summer gone?  I cannot believe that it’s the fourth of July already.  As much as I love summer and being with the fiance for three months, I do miss my team, roommates, and the athletic community at my school.  Since it is going to be my last year competing at the NCAA level, I want to it to start earlier  so I can enjoy it longer.  While the last three years have been nothing but a rollercoaster with injuries, coaching changes, PRs, and all-conference and all-region honors, I wouldn’t change it for the world.  The chaotic life of a student-athlete is just that — chaotic, but I love it.

Speaking of running, my running form is guilty as charged.  I had a six miler today, and if it wasn’t for the heat, I don’t think it could have gone any better considering the way my legs have felt the last week.  It took a lot of mental energy to concentrate on running as “proper” as possible, but my legs are thanking me.  Every mile or so I stopped to stretch out to loosen up a little more.  As good as the run was going, I was scared to stop, since that was when the tightness got the worst.  Six miles came and went.  I stopped, and there was no tightness.  I hope no one saw me because there was a smile on my face when I finished.  Today’s run was the first regular run I’ve had in a week that I felt OK enough to get some strides in afterwards.  I. Love. Strides.  I don’t know if it’s because I get to go fast, since distance running doesn’t require you to run that fast unless you’re finishing a race, but I love them. Yes, there was more smiling after the strides.  I still feel triumphant and excited.  Now let’s hope that the legs are up for my nine miler tomorrow.

Since it is the 4th of July weekend, the fiance and I do have our own festivities planned.  He had been craving beef hotdogs for a couple of weeks now, so we bought a pack of hotdogs at the store along with a few more 4th of July-type foods — chips, fruit, and popcicles — of which only fruit we buy any other time.  After our own little picnic, we’re heading over to the Rangers’ game and staying to watch the fireworks afterwards.  I love baseball, and I haven’t seen fireworks since I don’t even know when; so it’s looking like it will be a good weekend.  Happy Birthday America!

Or that’s what my high school coaches used to say, and so it was again today.  My legs feel terrible, and no, the hills did not help.  I’ve had this tightness creep back into my quads that I had last summer, and no one could explain to me what caused it and eventually it went away.  So, here I am waiting to for it to go away again.  I was hoping that with the help of my friend the heating pad that would help them loosen up pre-run, but due to the results of yesterday’s run and this morning’s hill workout I could tell that wasn’t helping.  Since no athletic trainer or coach can help me out, I decided to take things into my own hands, literally, as a I went to my go-to when I need an answer for something — google!  After about an hour of searching, I have found one likely culprit — my running form.  Easy fix? Yes and no.  Apparently, if you bend forward too much at the waist you can put more pressure on your quads and core causing early fatigue and tightness.  From what I have discovered, I need to be sure that I’m running with my hips forward.  My high school coach had been trying to teach me that all through high school, and obviously, I failed.  My next few runs will be decicated to teach my body how to run again.  At least the possible diagnosis does make sense.  The tightness started toward the end of my summer training last summer and started to go away around the middle of my actual cross country season when we started doing more speed work, which requires you to run on your toes and tall — with my hips forward.  I guess only time will tell. Wish me luck!

The one morning I did not have to go into my internship and didn’t get up at my normal time ended up not backfiring as much as I thought it would.  5:30 came around, and I wasn’t feeling it.  After all, I did have all day to get my workout in, but it wasn’t going to be in the upper seventies for long either.  Today was I was prepared to accept the consequences, but it turns out that I didn’t matter.  Once I peeled myself out of bed around 7:30, I logged onto weather.gov and turns out that it was only 73 degrees with 65 percent humidity.  What?!  Yeah.  I know.  It hadn’t been that cool here since I came down from the summer.  Yay for sleeping in and amazing weather.  Thank you clouds!

A tempo was on the schedule for the day and a tempo it was, kind of.  After a little over a two mile warm up, I arrived at a cinder track I found near an elementary school.  My legs needed a break from the pounding on cement, and I was looking forward to knowing how far I was into my run.  Well, I thought I was going to know anyway. I went through my first lap in 1:33, and I didn’t think I was running that fast but I kept going.  I ended up running a 6:33 first “mile.”  Keep in mind this was supposed to be a tempo run.  To my coach, a tempo is just an upbeat regular run, a regular run with some extra spring in your step, so I was aiming for around 7:00 pace.  When I saw the 6:33, I was in shock, yet I was excited.  I held that pace for all 16 laps, ran further out from the inside curve than necessary just in case the track was short, and ended up finishing in 25:58.  Even when I was walking away from the track, I wasn’t convinced of the size of the track.  As much as I wanted it to be a legit 400 meter track, I knew it wasn’t.  I ran my cooldown back home and grabbed a gatorage as soon as I flipped on the computer.  I went to the USA T&F website to check it out.  It turns out that the track was about 30 meters per lap short, which means I was about 480 meters off from my 4 mile tempo, but it means that I was dead on if not a couple seconds faster than 7:00 pace. Yay! And to top it all off, it was easy, almost effortless.  There is something about pacework on the track that allows me to relax and just cruise.  I never thought I would say this so early, but I miss track!

It ended up being a little over 8 miles total for the day.  Abs and push-ups were done as soon as I had recovered and stalked my progress for the day.  Since I was done with working out for the day at 9:30, that left me with a lot of time to watch FloTrack videos.  I recently discovered the archives for the Workout Wednesdays and spent a little over an hour watching videos of the Washington, Baylor, Florida State women, Jorday Hasay, and Sally Kipyego.  They make it all look so easy.  Sigh.  A girl can dream, watch, and admire, right?  

Here I am stuck in the middle of my final summer training as a collegiate athlete.  Little aches and pains are starting to creep into my feet and shins, and I need to do my best to keep them to a minimum, which means lots of ice and stretching.  Being a runner is a 24 – 7 commitment.  The hardest part about running for me is the fact that I can never really get it out of my head.  It’s in there all the time.  Almost every decision I make is made around running or I think about how it will affect my running.  After a stellar freshman year in cross country, I haven’t been able to reproduce those results, but I am determined to get that fitness and competitiveness back.  I want to get it back.  I need to get it back.  It’s going to be rough, but it will be worth it.  Here we go.

you live the life you’re given with the storms outside . . .  someday’s all i do is watch the sky*-

–hours pass and she still counts the minutes.

*i swim to brighter days despite the absence of sun.-

. . give me something to believe in — a breath from the breathing-.

-*i get the feeling we’re so misdirected . i get the feeling we have lost control.

*-there’s a lot that i don’t know . there’s a lot that i’m still learning.

-*you gotta swim.don’t let yourself sink.just find the horizon.i promise you it’s not as far as you think.-

-jack’s mannequin♥

- 21 & invincible.*

-something corporate