I had a nice, easy 4-miler this morning. It was a relatively warm 41 degrees, so that was pleasant. Also, it was the first run I’ve had since I got something flu-ish back in December when I’ve been able to run and have it feel kind of effortless. When I got sick, I coughed for a long time, and then I felt like I was floundering trying to get back onto my running schedule before I lost too much fitness (oops! too late!), so my runs have all felt so difficult lately!

Had to laugh at my kiddos today. My middle boy, Bo, was labeling parts of speech on some sentences I had printed out for him. His job was to label subject nouns (SN), verbs (V), adjectives (ADJ), adverbs (ADV), prepositions (P), articles (A), and objects of the preposition (OP). Being a person with a Y chromosome, he thought it was hilarious to doctor up his spelling of the abbreviations “P” and “OP.” Boys!

 

 

First post

So I started this blog a few weeks ago, and since then, I’ve been thinking about all the things I could include on here. Races! Workouts! Cute stories about my kids! Our homeschooling curriculum and philosophy! There’s a lot, admittedly that not many people will care about. I’m just hoping that there will be a few readers who are interested in running and homeschooling who may find what I have to say interesting, entertaining, or encouraging. But the volume of possible content was paralyzing, especially since I have to start “in the middle” – I’ve been homeschooling for a few years and running for a whole lot more!

I’m going to start with my workout today, just to get going. Hope to keep those up-to-date, more or less, and add thoughts on homeschooling when I can. So this morning was a track morning. It was dark when I started, and a coooooold 27 degrees! But the sun rose in the east, and a huge golden full moon was setting in the west at the same time, and that was almost beautiful enough for me to forget that I had left my Gatorade in the minivan.

I did six miles total. I’m about a week and a half out from the Myrtle Beach Marathon, my goal race, so I’m tapering. I warmed up for 1 1/2 miles. Then I did a ladder workout: 400 at mile pace, 800 at 5K pace, 1200 at 8K pace, 800 at 5K pace, 400 at mile pace. I usually aim for a recovery that is half the distance in the same amount of time (or less). So for me, the workout went like this:

400 in 1:45 (200 recovery in 1:45)

800 in 3:57 (400 recovery in 3:57)

1200 in 6:00 (600 recovery in <6:00 – these longer intervals, especially, are where the equal time recovery gets way too long, so I do the recovery distance, take a few deep breaths, and just go again)

800 in 3:57 (400 recovery in 3:57)

400 in 1:45

Then I did a 1 1/4 mile cooldown. I hit all my intervals today, so I was happy… despite being hungry/thirsty. I don’t really need Gatorade for a 6-mile workout, but I like having it when I’m at the track. Habit!

So I got home and my sweet hubby says, “How was the track?”

“Pretty good,” I reply. “Hard.”

“Well, it is made of asphalt,” he points out. Ba-dum bum.