I would run one thousand miles...

Actually, I did! Somewhere in the middle of today's almost-11 miler, I hit 1000 miles for the year. Yippee! This is the first year I've really taken a hardcore interest in paying attention to my mileage, so I was pumped to hit that milestone. :) Today's run was pretty entertaining, I currently don't have a car so I decided to run home from work, but take the looooong way to make my run 10 miles instead of 5.5. Well then, being the genius that I am, I got completely lost, and only managed to make it back because I recognized the streets from some random run I went on last year. But it was a REALLY good long run - for once in my life, I was feeling extremely strong on the hills, and there were plenty of them. My legs kind of died the last 2 miles, but I kept trucking and made it home feeling pretty good. People at work thought I was nuts - "are you sure you want to run home?" "Yeah, I'm actually running further than home too" "Uh...wow, you're crazy. I guess you ran cross country so..." haha.

Running has been good to me this week. So good, I think it's trying to tell me "what is all this triathlon nonsense, it will always come back to running!" And yes, it always will. But that doesn't stop me from drooling when I see mega-cyclists all spandexed out on their super hot road bikes come cruising by, or get a little jealous when I see 3 people in wetsuits doing laps in Lake Wingra. All in good time...all in good time.

So I guess here's my week 3 training report. Training for what, I no longer know. If you didn't happen to read my last post, my goal race of the BAA Half Marathon filled up before I got a chance to sign up. So now, I have all sorts of interesting options...actually, there really aren't that many of them. I could a) keep on the HM training plan just for the sake of the fact that involves running a lot, and hope to find a 10 miler or something, b) do whatever the hell I want for awhile, or c) go for broke and turn this half marathon training into marathon training. I really don't know which is the best option. It was brought to my attention today that there's a marathon happening about a half hour out of Boston on October 18, my former club coach (who lives in Boston) is running it, and told me I should train for it. Pros to this are that hey, I said I was going to train for a marathon, so here it is! And it's also apparently a very fast course. Bonus points! Cons are that it is more expensive (actually, lies. Entry fee is actually less than the half, go figure. $55? That is one cheap marathon!)/more complex travel-wise than something in the city (which was basically the only reason I picked the BAA half in the first place - travel is not going to be so much of an option without a car, or money.) However, if my old coach is doing it, the likelihood of having a way to travel there goes up by a lot. There's also a half marathon associated with it that I could also do if I chickened out on the full. But I really don't know. Any suggestions? For now, I think I'm just going to keep on the half marathon training plan, but keep adding to my long runs (which I was planning on doing anyway - today's run was supposed to be 8, not 11 :)) and see what happens. I've really been enjoying having a plan in that it has forced me to do things that I really doubt I would be doing otherwise. Generally, I don't do easy 8-9 milers...like, to me, that is a long run. And now I'm doing that at least twice a week, plus a real long run, and discovering that it's not all that bad. Anyway, ramblings aside, here are the stats from this week:
Monday: off (planned)
Tuesday: 6 w/ last 10 minutes moderate (7:30 pace)
Wednesday: 8.9 easy (7:44 pace) + 1.4 EASY (8:14 pace) - went on a run with my friend Jade, then stopped at her house for awhile because we both felt like puking. Still did on the way home, but refused to walk, hence the slow last 1.4 miles.
Thursday: 5 easy (forgot watch, but it was pretty slow I think) + BEER MILE!
Friday: 8 w/last 15 moderate (7:18 pace)
Satuday: 6 w/ last 10 hard (7:16 pace)
Sunday: 10.9 easy (7:39 pace)
Total miles: 47.2
Days off: 1
Crap-fests: 1 (Wednesday was just plain unpleasant)

Things I learned this week are that my best runs seem to come when I have absolutely no desire to go running, I definitely, DEFINITELY run better later in the day, and PowerGels with caffeine still rock my world. :)