We still ended up having a fun night, though. Jerry and I met Nathan, Kendall (his girlfriend), and Becky (my sister-in-law) for dinner. We went to Public House, a newish restaurant that Jerry and I have grown to love over the last year or so. We don't go there often, but when we do, we always love it.
I wasn't very hungry by dinnertime (I usually eat super early, at 4:00, and we had plans to meet at 6:30--so I'd snacked a little too much while I was waiting to head out, and spoiled my appetite). I ended up ordering half a Michigan salad (greens, dried cherries, candied walnuts, cherry vinaigrette, and blue cheese--I ordered it without the blue cheese, because I am not a fan of it).
The salad was delicious! I adore dried cherries, and the cherry vinaigrette was awesome. I also ate a few bites of Jerry's food, because he ordered my favorite dish on their menu--chicken and waffles.
After dinner, we went bowling. My back as been really painful lately, so I chose not to bowl (but I still like to go hang out while others bowl). I played Keno, and my numbers were doing pretty well--I thought I was going to hit all four a couple of times, but no such luck. I ended up winning $19 (after paying $20 to play, so I technically lost $1--but it was worth it, because Keno is fun!)
After doing easy runs all weekend, I was a little nervous about today's run. I had 4 x 6:00 at "faster than race pace" on the schedule. Six minutes is a long time to run at a fast pace!
We had terrible weather all day yesterday (freezing rain all day, and then just a downpour of rain last night). I was hoping that today would be nice enough to run outside, but it was super windy--and the wind would have made running at a fast pace really difficult. Jerry went out for a run before I did this morning, and he said he wished he'd run on the treadmill, because the wind was terrible.
Anyway, I headed out to the garage to run on the treadmill. I set up my Garmin for a 10:00 warm-up, 4 x 6:00 at fast pace with recovery between each interval until my heart rate got down to 136 bpm.
I started out with the easy warm-up. I did that for 10 minutes, which ended up being just under a mile, and then I bumped the speed up to 7.7 mph (a 7:48/mile pace). I was expecting it to be super hard, like when I run 400-meter intervals, but I was surprised at how good I felt. My heart rate got into the correct zone (about 95% of maximum). It wasn't easy, but it wasn't half as bad as I imagined.
Once I hit six minutes, I switched to a slow walk (3 mph) until my heart rate dropped down to 136 bpm; then I bumped the pace up again and ran another interval. I felt surprisingly good throughout the whole run! One of the benefits of taking easy runs TRULY easy is that you save enough energy to hit your goal paces during speed workouts. So, while I felt like I was running way too easy over the weekend, I think it will pay off when I do speed work.
I did four intervals total, and then stopped my Garmin. I had done 24 minutes at a 7:48/mile pace! Even though I had three short walk breaks during those 24 minutes, I was really happy with how good I felt. Now, I just have to work on running that pace for a total of 49 minutes without any walk breaks--haha ;)
Several people have emailed me to ask about whether I'm going to host the Runs for Cookies Virtual 5K again in January. This year snuck by so fast! It's hard to believe that it's past the time I should have posted about it. I've done the virtual race for the last three years, so it would be a shame to stop now. Yes, I will be hosting it--it will take place on January 25th, as usual. I will hopefully get all the details up this week!
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