Another Catch Up Post

Not sure what is going on in my head these days.   Been battling a bit of depression - not all that uncommon for me, but frustrating nonetheless.  It also tends to lead to a strong gravitational pull from the couch and self-medicating with Netflix (which I heard on the news the other day does have a similar brain chemistry effect to drugs and alcohol - just peachy).  Thankfully, Susan is coming off of a stress fracture earlier this summer and is happy to restart some of our weekly runs - though they haven't been quite as long as she would like and included plenty of walking as summer really hit with the higher temps and humidity these last couple of weeks.

I haven't signed up for the century in October yet and I think I just missed a cheaper price by not doing it last week.  Oh well - $5 or $10 isn't the big deal.  But my husband pointed out that I had better be getting my ass on my bike more if I have any hope of completing it without a lot of suffering.  I hate when he is right.

I've gotten a few runs in and finally got back on my bike tonight after a hiatus since my birthday:

- 5.4 miles with Susan on the Katy Trail on 8/15 (13:27 min/mi - nice day, but purposely kept it slow as it was her first long run in months)

- 3.0 miles with Stacy after kid dropoff 2nd day of school 8/20 (12:39 min/mi though I got a call from a client and walked/talked for a few min)

- 5.0 miles with Susan looping 3x around Stephens Lake on 8/22 (miserable hot/humid - tough to even keep the 12:58 min/mi pace)

- 3.0 miles with Susan - testing out the 5K course (except the last 0.08 mi which was on school grounds) for the upcoming race our school is sponsoring that she is co-chairing - another miserable hot/humid run with way too much walking (it was so bad my heart rate was still sky high while walking for 13:25 min/mi overall moving pace) - this last Thursday

**EPIC MUD RUN** - 9/1 - did this with my entire family.  My 9 year old daughter was a freaking rock star.  My 12 year old son whined some, but overall seemed to understand that sometimes "epic" isn't all that "fun" while you are doing it and thought it was overall pretty "awesome".  I was proud of him.  My husband and I enjoyed it.  Full report with pics from my disposable camera yet to come.  Still some debate on the distance, but it took us just over an hour and we did some running in between obstacles so I'd like to hope it was around 3 miles (which is what I'm putting in the total - didn't want to gunk up the Garmin).

- 10.3 miles solo hill repeats on my bike in my neighborhood; bummed to see that my favorite "loops" in my area have fresh gravel/oil (ie. "chip and peel") that do NOT look road bike tire friendly.   So tonight I did hill repeats for lack of a better term.  I did the nasty "Wavco hill" 3x with a little loop up past my house, down to the Moreau River bridge and through one of the other cul-de-sacs.  It was getting pretty dim on the last one and I had my goal of ten miles in so I called it good.  But I do need to spend some serious quality time back on the bike for the next 6 weeks or so.  Susan said I just need to keep Thursdays as run days for her.

So to sum it up, have ran a little, but my workouts leave a lot to be desired.  Not in a great head space, but some of that is work stress the last few weeks that hopefully will get better this week or next.  Gotta take the bad with the good - finding a way to hang in there and at least get something done.  Hope to be less MIA in the coming weeks.

Swimming = 10.25 mi
Biking = 1071.1 miles
Running = 161.2 miles