Hi Sheila! Glad to hear you got in a good run!

Ennay, thanks for the info! That sounds like a blast! I've actually just recently considered planning marathon vacations. I saw some really cool ones advertised in Runner's World - Great Wall of China and Greece and really great places like that. It would be so motivating to train for something like that! I've always wanted to take a cruise, too, so to be able to do one where I knew I'd be at least working off the food I was eating would be terrific!

Four miles for me today...33 minutes! WOW! I was rockin'! It was raining cats and dogs all day though so I did run on my sister's treadmill. I can't wait to get back outside again. Hopefully the weather will co-operate by Sunday for my longer run.

Kara

Kara - you and Helen... can't see you anymore for the dust - !
3.5 miles today.

Diva, good going, almost to week 2!!

Kara, were your sneakers smoking after you finished that run?

I've not been feeling well this week, but I did 2 miles today. I have a 5k this saturday, and wish i had been able to run more. Oh well! And I doubt this will be a PR because I've heard the course has tons of hills!

Happy Valentine's Day!

WTG Diva on day 2!

Kara, you were smokin'!

I did my second straight run today...30 mins without walking. Which brings me to a "pace" question. If I'm jogging, and after the first ten minutes of torture, feel like I'm in the "got this all day long" zone, I'm sweating and breathing harder than normal, but can still talk, is that where I want to be/stay for a while, as far as speed goes?

Cheryl

Yeah pretty much! You want to stay somewhere in the "I can still talk but not chatter away all day like I am on the phone" range. Best described as "I CAN still talk but I'd really rather not".

Good description ennay! I tend to use the length of my sentences as a guide too - if I can talk, but try to keep it at short answers to questions I know I'm working harder than when I can give a lengthy explanation of what I've been up to recently! I sometimes vary between the two depending how hard I want to work and whether I want to talk to the people I'm running with anyway...

Thanks Ennay and Helen, that pretty much describes where I'm at now, so I'll try and keep it at that level.

Cheryl

Hi all - happy Friday!

I did 4 miles today, but shook it up a bit by running half a mile at 5.2mph, then a quarter mile at 6mph, then a quarter mile at 6.5mph - for four miles. Felt good - got my heart rate up... not sure I can call it fartlek or intervals, but it was an interesting change!

I did a 7 mile run today at about a 9 minute pace. It was an absolutely gorgeous day for running, and I ran by the Hudson River, which was great to look at. A bit windy, but nothing compared to my race last week. Overall, I was really happy - it felt SO easy and relaxing! Hard to believe that less than a year ago I was terrified to run 5 miles because that was "so far." I'm thrilled with how much better at running I've gotten, and I'm thinking more seriously about training for a marathon now. Will keep you ladies posted!

I had a bit of a blah long run today. It was just over 19 miles, about 15 seconds per mile slower than last week. I'm not bothered by that, it was a hillier, more difficult route (off road through woods jumping over tree roots etc), and I did 7.2 yesterday whereas last week I had a rest day the day before my long run, it's more the fact that I didn't get into the zone that bothered me. There are days when I feel like I could just run all day and I love it, and then there are others where I have to force myself to take every step. Today was one of the second group I think, but at least I kept on going, and I was still well within the pace I should be training at.

cross country tomorrow, we're two races off winning the league we're in so they want everyone to turn out to try to wrap it up a race early. I don't know how my legs will feel in the morning, but at least it will only be short and it hasn't rained for a couple of weeks so there shouldn't be much mud. I think it will be frosty though!

Helen, there are days when I literally say to myself, "One step closer to being finished..." about a million times a run! Then there are, "Oh my word, has it been an hour already?!" days. For me it has a lot to do with what I ate the day before.

Renee, I'm sure you'll set a Personal Record for Hilly Courses! Good luck!

Laura, glad you had a nice run!

Heather, I love to mix up intervals, too. One friend from this website once suggested "running your phone number" so I would run for the number of minutes of each number of my phone number at a particular pace. It's a good way to pass the time! And you can add in your area code if you want to do a longer run. I'd run our phone number, my parents', my sisters', my in-law's...each came out to be *about* an hour, with the area codes.

Cheryl, way to go! When I started running about a year and a half ago, I could BARELY finish a mile in twelve minutes! It took me almost a year to work up to being able to run five miles at a time!

Diva, keep up the great work! You'll be off the "couch" and on to the "5K" in no time!

Four easy miles for me today. I realized last night that I had done an extra mile on Sunday, above what the training schedule said. Oops. Next week is a recovery week, and it's really the last "easy" week of the whole schedule, so there's no turning back after that!

Oh, Avery just dumped the dog's entire water bowl on the floor. She is trouble.

Kara