Tough Grrrl Tuesday... (a day late)

(Stumbled upon free internet access... so here's yesterday's post... I know you've been dying to hear from me!)

We have been camping the last couple of days at Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA. It is a fantastic camp ground for many reasons, but by far my favorite thing is the “dish room” that’s connected to the bathrooms. This makes doing the cook out dishes SO much easier. I’ll have plenty of photos and other info to post when I get home.

Getting up exceptionally early to run is not easy on this trip. I share a tent with Elliott and as soon as you start to unzip the thing, the other person wakes up. So, I’ve had to sleep in and just run after everyone is up. This is not a problem for Scott but it does make me feel a little bad that he gets the brunt end of morning duty.

Monday I did an easy 45 minutes with a few “pick ups” at the end. I don’t know how far they were… maybe 150 meters? Maybe not. The beach has a “heart healthy” trail so it was very convenient and pleasant to run.

Tuesday is my “tough” day and I was scheduled to do a 20 minute warm up followed by 4 x 800 with 400 recoveries in between. I was not feeling great nor optimistic at the start. I was outside all day Monday and didn’t hydrate. I had a couple of beers in the evening. I had basically no water. All that fresh air helped me sleep pretty well despite the rain and the not-quite-5-year-old sharing the space with me but every time I woke up, some body part was asleep and required rolling over and adjusting.

I got up and ate a banana/raisin bran/chocolate chip muffin and had a cup of tea and THOUGHT about drinking some water. Of course I didn’t drink any. I just got going. The warm up was fine at about 9:10 pace. I was nervous about the speed work, afraid that a) I would poop out from lack of hydration and b) I would (literally) poop out because my digestion has been wonky from the camping! The 800s were actually pretty good, though. I was hovering around 7:00 pace for the first three. The last one I decided to go (pardon the expression) balls to the wall. I managed to do run it at 6:40. This was a nice surprise. And I was pooped. And pooped. ☺

I hopped it to the ladies room and then skipped my 15 minute cool down in order to help Scott load up the car for the further adventures of our vacation… which I will share with you soon enough.