Week 2 - 22 Miles

My workouts this week went pretty well - surprisingly, the hardest one was not my long run, but it was my quarter-mile repeats. Instead of doing the repeats in the evening, like I did the first week, I did them early in the morning ... yeah, that was quite a bit harder! There just was not a lot of fuel in my system, so I felt like my feet weighed 10 lbs a piece. And, I made a mistake I'll never make again ... I tried Gu (google it) for the first time ... in the middle of the run. There's nothing like gagging while running - not a pleasant experience! :) But, the Gu worked and gave me the energy I needed to complete the repeats. Needless to say, I taste-tested other energy gels before running my next run, and quickly realized that Gu was the grossest (is that a word?), and my fave is Clif Shot Energy Gel (even though it's still pretty gross).

Unlike the quarter-mile repeats, my long run on Sunday was AWESOME! I ran farther than I've ever run before - 9 miles, and I honestly felt like I could have kept on truckin' at the end. I was SUPER nervous beforehand, after how difficult my 7 mile run was the week before ... but as I said in my last post, I stacked the odds in my favor and it totally worked! There were a couple points where I felt tired and a little out of breath, but overall, I really enjoyed the run - I spent an hour and 40 minutes rocking out to my running play list and enjoying the scenery :) I also realized that I much prefer to run in neighborhoods and on city streets than on nature trails - don't get me wrong, the Rocky Mountains are awesome scenery, but there's a lot more going on in the city to keep my mind distracted from my body's fatigue. I'm thinkin' that running through the five boroughs of NYC will be perfect!

So, if you're interested in checking out the details of my quarter-mile repeats or my long run, I've posted the links below. And, as I've said before and I'll say every week - THANK YOU SO MUCH for your support and donations! After only a week and a half of fundraising, I am already a third of the way to my $3000 goal! You guys ROCK!

• 7/16 - Quarter-mile Repeats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9509154
• 7/19 - 9-mile Long Run: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9154375