Hi!

I know. It’s been a while. I haven’t really been in the mood to blog. I keep thinking that I should but never have anything to say.

I’m not sure how much I have to say today, but I FEEL LIKE BLOGGING! 🙂

I started a 30 week marathon training plan and I’ve stuck with it for 12 weeks. The marathon that I want to run was over 30 weeks away when I started, so I’ve repeated a couple of weeks so far. I’m on week 10 of the plan.

This morning, I ran my longest run in who knows how long – 5.5 miles! Confession: I walked uphill on some steep parts. Hills hurt me and it’s just not worth an injury so I walked uphill 2-1/2 times. On the ‘half’ hill, I started walking and decided it wasn’t as steep as I thought and ran up the second half. Yay me. I used to stress about having to walk but now I don’t care so much.

When I first started back after my breakup with running, I couldn’t run a mile without feeling like my heart was going to explode. I just think about that when I’m feeling kind of down about my training and it instantly makes me feel better.

Today, I ran around Forest Park. I’ve posted a couple of pics on my other blog TexanInStLouis.com. It is a BEAUTIFUL park. It’s huge, too. St. Louisans like to tell you that it’s bigger than Central Park. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it is a very nice park. There are museums, golf courses, lakes, ponds, the zoo – all kinds of stuff over there. I live 1/2 a mile from it – which is GREAT!

Anyway… I ran around the park. I’d only been around it twice before: once on my bike and once with my husband. I got to a fork in the road, so to speak, and wasn’t sure which way to go. As I look at the picture, it seems obvious, BUT when I was running earlier, in my head, the path could have gone either way. I was running on gravel and the gravel turned right, so I turned right.

This is where I’ll tell you that the proverbial ‘road less traveled’ isn’t always the right way to go. I decided to go down the little graveled path and ugh…

Stairs. Lots of them. Then a bridge and another bridge.

After I got to a spot where I decided, Yeah – I went the wrong way, I looked up and saw a helicopter at one of the hospitals across the way. I was tempted to wave one down. I was tired!

I back tracked, got on the right road and finished my run. No harm, no foul. I saw some new things in the park, so I guess the side trip was worth it.

At the end of my run, I had a leisurely mile and a half walk home. I was feeling pretty good.

Yes, I know I don’t LOOK happy, but I really was. Maybe it was the hunger. It was time to eat!!

Until next time – happy running!