The first week....

This past week marks what I am going to call the official start to my fall (though the temperature isn't quite there yet)....It was my first week of school at CBU and also the first week I have gotten back up in the 50 mile range in quite some time....

Started the week out last Sunday with an 8 miler in the midday heat on the Wolf River Trails...Monday I finally convinced myself to do some speed work...I actually live near a pretty big hill and from teh base of the hill to the very top is exactly 1/4 mile...the grade is pretty steep (for Memphis) except for the last .1 miles where it starts to level out a bit....I did 6 x .25 miles uphill and that was plenty for me....total of 2.5 miles with warm up, repeats, and cooldown....

Monday marked the first night of class and I was really tired going to school so I picked up an energy drink on the way....class went really well..I am really interested in what I am learning as it is what I want to do with my life....the difference between CBU and U of Memphis is incredible....I was not very impressed with my undergrad experience at U of M and I have been impressed from day 1 with CBU....however, after class (I go til 10:15 pm) I came home hoping to be able to fall asleep in order to wake up and ride to my Tuesday morning meeting.....not the case....the energy drink during class had me wired and I wasn't able to fall asleep until after 1 am sometime...


I took Tuesday completely off as I woke up feeling pretty tired...I also took Wednesday off because I had to take care of some classwork for Wednesday evening before going to work...

Thursday I don't work until 1pm and I don't have class so I slept in and I made the mistake of waiting until about 9 am to start my run....I knew from the start it was going to be a tough one but man, I was not expecting it to be that tough....I ended up slogging it out for 13 miles, probably walking at least 4 or so of those miles finishing the day with about a 12:40 pace but I was really more concerned with just covering the miles....

Friday I woke up at 4:45 because Lauren and her training partner Elle (both of whom will be rocking out their first 50k's at Stumpjump) were going on a long run and Lauren asked me if I would start out with them since it would be completely dark for the first hour....I agreed and they put me up front so I could knock out the massive spider webs with half dollar or bigger spiders in them on the Wolf River Trails....We ran from WRT and cut over to Shelby Farms to refill at the VC then we ran the Tour to the backside where we got on G'town parkway and ran back to the WRT traihead.....I stopped at 11.5 as I had to get ready to go to work and they kept on going for 15 or so.....

Saturday, I had another early morning, waking up at 4 am and starting my run about 4:45....I ran at Shelby Farms, as I thought there might be fewer spider webs than WRT, though there were still plenty for me to clear out for the later runners.....I ran one loop solo at a pretty slow pace then ran a loop with Daniel and we picked up the pace a bit....ran the third loop with Daniel as well but I dropped off pretty hard during the last two miles as I was pretty beat....Total mileage for the day was just over 20 which I am satisfied with....put my week at 55 miles which I hope to repeat again this week.....

Today I went out to cheer on Lauren at the Wolfpack Triathlon out at Shelby Farms....Her goal was to break and hour and to finish in the top 3 females overall...She did both, finishing in 57 minutes and some change and taking third female overall!

Today is filled with school work, possibly a late afternoon easy recovery run, but we will see...on a side note, my full suspension mountain bike is about halfway built...I am super excited and hopefully my bike mechanics at work will be able to help me finish it this week as I plan on racing it at the six hours of Herb Parsons in two weeks....

happy running and share the road!