A 40 mile week!!

I am pretty sure that last week was my highest running week ever.  I am pretty sure that my previous record was thirty-seven miles.  Ironically, I didn't do a significantly long run.  I probably could have run more on Sunday, but I really don't want to bump my overall mileage too much in one week.  I would hate to overtrain at this point.

I took it pretty easy early in the week.  I knew I was running a race on Thursday and wanted to be somewhat fresh.  I ran around four miles on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Between both races and my warm up and cool down, I ran close to eleven miles on Thursday.

After taking Friday off (as my normal rest day and to recover from Thanksgiving), I joined my friend Kelly and my new running buddies Rod and Steve for a run.  Kelly's schedule had her running ten miles, I think.  Mine said eight.  We ran twelve.  I wouldn't change a thing,  It was a great run into the hills east of here.  Rod had told us that they had seen a mountain lion up there once, so I was thankful to be running in a group.   The only wildlife we saw on Saturday were cows.  They startled me as I rounded a corner and saw a couple.   As a bunch of them started running, all I could think about was City Slickers, the stampede and Billy Crystal with a coffee grinder.

My running buddies.

Steve grabbed my camera so he could take some pictures of me.  He would run ahead and turn back to get pictures of us.  Fun!

 

 

This one is a bit blurry, but I love the setting.

 

 

 

It was a great run with great friends.  Kelly and I had planned on turning around at five miles to only do ten.  The guys wanted to run a full hour before turning around.  We were really enjoying ourselves and decided to run a bit further.  That's how our ten miler became a twelve miler.*

Sunday was supposed to be my long run.  I had fifteen on the schedule.  Like I mentioned above, I knew that I already had over thirty miles for the week.  In addition, the weekend of parties and family had taken it out of me.  The idea of getting up at 5 a.m. again was NOT appealing.  I like to get back early on Sundays so that Kenny has options for his day.  Also, my dad was in town and I wanted to spend some time with him.  I slept in and left after 8 a.m.  

I ran up to the Oak Canyon Nature Center, where I had gone with my dad and kids the day before.  It was a fantastic little canyon with great hiking trails.  I figured that they would be even better to run.  We had seen a ridge trail and the nice employee in the center told me that the upper ridge trail connected to the Walnut Canyon Reservoir   The trail was great.  It was a challenging single-track going up to the upper edge of the small canyon.  A steep trail with stairs went off to the left leading to the reservoir.   It was super windy up along the rim of the lake.  It was a nice, paved trail all around the lake.  There were a lot of walkers and runners around this two mile loop.   Once I finished the loop, I went back down the trail into the nature reserve.  I took the lower trail back to the entrance of the park for a nice variety. 

 Photo courtesy of Flikr  VLKT

The first part of my Sunday run was rough.  I felt like stopping on several occasions.  I was sluggish and tired.  I figured that holiday celebrating had taken its toll on me.  I actually considered cutting the run short before heading up the hill to the nature center.  I pushed on and by mile five or so, I was feeling good.  My last couple miles home were really strong.  I know I could have gone on for another hour, but I had promised my husband that I would be home by 10.  I ended up running nine miles and felt pretty good.

So that is my week in a nutshell.  I should probably write more often so that these things don't get quite so long.

Happy Running!