10 miles that turned into 12

Thank you everyone so much for the birthday wishes!

I had a fabulous day that included lunch at Jimmy John's with some of my coworkers...

The boss, Gene, me, Katie (across from me) and Rylie

Jimmy John's has the best bread ever. We tried to get a free loaf of bread for my birthday but they said they didn't do that :(

It actually was snowy out and took some time to get there but it was one of the last times we will all be together since Katie is leaving us and moving to the city where the young retire... Portland. (Reference to Portlandia.. do you watch that show? It's stupid but in a funny way)

I'm sad she is leaving cause she made work fun. We would joke around, quote movies and songs all day long. I might have to make a trip to visit her sometime this year. Her and her mom actually just signed up to run the Portland Half Marathon in October. It will be their first half! I'm so excited for her and glad she could come to me for advice on training plans, sports bras (I recommended Moving Comfort they are my fav!) and running shoes.

Anyway you can obviously see I'll miss her. Good thing we text each other random crap about once a day to make each other laugh. So back to my birthday...

All I really wanted on my birthday was to keep warm and snuggle up to my boys so that's what we did! Much better than being outside in the cold and driving around on a stormy day.

Keeping warm when I did venture outdoors. I heart my Brooks Run Happy beanie I won at the Las Vegas RnR expo

Snuggling with my boys (minus Gene he was taking the picture :)

Gene made us a fabulous spaghetti dinner! And after we had some yummy birthday treats...

Is it a brownie or is it a cookie??

Brownie mix with cookie dough on top

It's both!

So do you think it's called a brookie? or a coownie?  

And yesterday Gene bought me this bad boy...

I had my sliver with some milk not the beer in this picture haha.

This cake is huge!! You might have seen it at Costco. All I could handle was a small sliver it's very rich but oh soooo good! I gave a huge slice to my brother and our friend so they could take some home. I will probably do the same for my coworkers.

After all the desserts I was definitely wanting to go out and run off some of those extra calories I consumed all week.

So today I set out for a 10 mile run that turned into a 12 mile run. Yay me!

The day was actually pretty. Which means it wasn't snowing or raining, a change from the last few days. It was a little bit cold but the crisp air felt good. I set out on an out and back course. I had no specific pace in mind just wanted to keep it at a relaxed easy pace. At about mile 5 I was feeling good so decided to go out one more mile. The first 6 miles were without music. I just enjoyed the sounds around me and the scenery.

Icy lake and finally some snow on the mountains in the background.

 At the turn around I turned on Pandora and was enjoying the sun breaking through the clouds for a few minutes. There was a headwind that was making me cold but yet I was sweaty and hot all the same time which made for a gross feeling.

I thought the wind was slowing me down but looking at my Garmin stats after the run I was actually progressively increasing my speed ending with mile 12 with an 8:49 pace. I was pretty happy about that since lately during my long runs my last few miles were slower than the first and I never felt the extra energy kick in to make me want to speed up. Today I did. 

12 miles in 1:53 for an overall pace of 9:28

My week looked like this...

Monday - 8 mile run

Tuesday - 1.2 mile warm up & Strength- Chest & Triceps

Wednesday - Birthday! 2.5 mile run with one mile at at 7:53 pace to see if I had some sub 8's left in me. Strength - Shoulder, Abs & push ups

Thursday - Cross train- 35 minutes on the spin bike followed my stretching and foam rolling

Friday - rest day

Saturday - rest day

Sunday - 12 mile run and .3 mile cooldown walk

Total running mileage - 24 miles.

I just missed my goal of at least 25 miles. I should have ran Friday or Saturday or ran a little longer one of the other days.

I also wanted an extra day of strength but I'm happy with at least 2.

This coming week I hope to have my mileage at about 30 miles and 2-3 days of strength.

How did your training go this week?

Have you ever had a Costco cake?

They are HUGE but delicious! I love their pumkin pie's too.  

Birthday Sweat Session

Outside the gym this morning right as the snow started coming down.

Well not quite the birthday sweat session I wanted but it will do :)

Headed to the gym today and got in a 2.5 mile run (at 1% incline) with mile 2 at a 7:53 pace cause I wanted to see if I still had at least a little bit of speed left in me. Since I'm focusing more on mileage increase I haven't been focusing on speed but I will start incorporating some in next week.

After the run Gene and I did a few sets of push ups then we headed home. He had an early meeting and the snow was really start to come down.

I wanted to get in a few more miles, outside, today. But as you can see in the picture below that isn't going to happen.

View from my living room widow

And I'm ok with staying in today. I could hop on my treadmill but it's in my detached garage, and something about walking even just a few feet into the cold snowy day makes me not want to run that bad haha.  I might do a little at home workout to supplement my morning workout though.

School is still open even though it looks crazy out there!I remember now that it takes a lot for schools to close here. They would literally have to be a minimum of 12 inches on the ground haha. My son wasn't happy I didn't have to work today and he had to go to school. He said it wasn't fair. I told him well it's my birthday. He still wasn't impressed :)

Hope you all have a great day!