This week's lessons from the long run: hydration, confidence, and toenails.

This morning the workout was upper body goodness, so I whipped out Cathe's Ramped Up Upper Body.  However, I wanted to see if I could spice this workout up by making it a little different, so I went searching 'round the disc....and then I found the mishmosh premixes, kids:

Mish to the mosh.

Because I get excited about intensely odd things, imagine my joy when I saw that last premix with the abs inserted into the upper body exercises.  I know, right?  Nothing gets better than having the abs woven within a workout so you don't have to mentally coerce yourself into doing a separate workout after your main workout is over, amirite?

Small dog agrees, I can tell.

How did I get the stupidest human??

Anyway, what I really want to talk about is yesterday's workout: my long run.  Twenty glorious miles at a 9:50 pace was on the schedule, but this is how it ended up:

Overall not a bad run, especially considering that I have one really nice head cold (I couldn't even taste my energy gels during the run) and that I ran straight into the wind for a lot of those miles.  I'm happy with that pace, and I'm not even upset I stopped a mile early.  Well, I pretty much had to stop a mile early, because I had to get ready to go to a birthday party.  Because, you know, running 19 miles and then going to a party is exactly what stupid runners do.

But, like every run, this long run taught me some lessons to make me (hopefully) a little less stupid.  Here's some things this run taught me:

1) Every time I do a run of this distance, I am always incredibly thirsty by mile 15 or so.  Even though I bring water with me, it's never enough - I feel like I need an entire liter of water per mile after 15 or so, I'm so damn thirsty.  Since I do an out and back route most of the time, I realized (DUH) I should drop little bottles of water on my way out so I can chug them on my way back.  Only took me about 7 years of long runs to figure that one out.

2) I am now completely unashamed of standing on the side of a country road in a sports bra and capris.  When you start the run in sleeves and then you start running with the wind at your back, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do when she feels like she's going to spontaneously combust...even if it means changing into a t-shirt with a yard full of goats eyeballing you with their creepy goat eyes.

3) My legs are getting used to running outside again.  While my head and lungs were feeling BUH the entire time, my legs felt good and strong for the entire run.  They even feel decent today.  That's a little confidence booster, let me tell you.

Woot woot!  CONFIDENCE

4) When nature calls after you tie that long-sleeved shirt around your waist, remember that you're wearing it when you answer the call.  Because if you forget, you'll have to throw that long-sleeved shirt straight into the laundry when you get home.  And that's all I have to say about that.

5) Running while sick is made much better by wearing tie-die and purple capris.

Large dog photo bomb in progress.

5) Toenails.  Completely unnecessary.

I celebrated these lessons after the birthday party by going home, chugging some NyQuil, and heading straight to bed.  Woot.


And here's a woot woot! for some learnings:

• Honest, I haven't had any NyQuil this evening.  Yet.
• I could get used to the nonfreezing weather we're having.
• What I can't get used to is not being able to smell or taste anything.  It's sad when you're cooking something new and you have to get the hubbs to taste-test it for you.
• What the world needs is more tie-die running gear.
• The world now has one less toenail.

Tomorrow's workout:  Mile repeats.  BUH.