Friday Five

1. This has been an incredibly exhausting week. I'll start with the bad here and get it over with so this post ends on a happy note. Our beloved boxer of 13 yrs, Sassy, died Monday night.We knew something was up on Sunday by the way she was acting and it was like she'd dropped a ton of weight in the few days before. I'll spare all the sad details because the situation itself is sad enough, but it was scary. We all were prepared (as best we could be) for her passing on Sunday but the old girl decided she wasn't ready to go then and we had one more day. Monday evening when I got home things just didn't feel right. I think my sweet Sassy just needed Annabelle (my almost 10 yr old daughter) to be ok with her to go. We all said our goodbyes (again) and hubby picked up Sassy to take her to the vet, but my girl didn't want to go that way so she looked back at us and then turned her head to him and before he couldn't even get to the truck she was gone. We are all very sad but are coping well. We will miss our girl but find peace in knowing she lived a very full life!

2. Even with with events on Monday I still managed to get in bed at a decent hour and up for my speed workout on Tuesday morning. For those that don't know, I have to be up at 4:03 am in order to dress and make the drive over for practice. I was so so tired from being up later, rushing to get things ready and then not the best night of sleep so it made me a little concerned for how my workout would go Tuesday morning. My schedule had me doing 2 mi warm up, 12x400 repeats and 2 mi cool down. I had done plenty of speed workouts but not 400s before. I was nervous but ready. My goal pace was to be 2:10 with a brisk jog back to the start/1:30 recovery. I normally struggle with absolute consistency and being on goal pace especially for speed work. Ahh but Tuesday was an exception. Here's how those 400s went -
 1:55 1:59 1:57 1:57 1:57 1:57 1:57 1:56 1:55 1:57 1:54 1:52
 I left practice feeling successful!

3.  I recieved a Bestowed box for review this week. I cannot wait to try all the amazing products in my box and review them for you. I'm just waiting for life to slow down a tiny bit so I can get on that. I want to make sure I take my time with each of the things in the box so I can give a proper review. Stay tuned.

4. Wednesday our local running club (Knoxville Track Club) and our Wednesday night runners planned our run to log miles for each of the victims (injured and deceased) of the Boston bombing. We had almost 70 runners set out to log 268 miles. I ran a measly 4 miles that was on my schedule for the day but the group as a whole logged over 550 miles. When we arrived at the run we were each given a wristband with the name and picture of one of those people injured or deceased. I ran my 4 miles for Jessica Downes who suffered severe leg injuries. I tried to do a bit of research on her when I got home to see if I could find out who she is or get to know her a little. Well, I learned she's a newly wed and her husband suffered leg injuries as well. These two people may not ever run again so I was thrilled to be able to log some miles for her.

5. Finally, today was my second speed workout for the week. 8x200 meters. I have been exhausted all week long. It's no shock that I was in bed later than I should be for my 4:03am alarm. Had it not been for my daughter having friends over for the night and being on a tight schedule I'd have hit snooze this morning and put my run off until this evening. Thankfully my body was once again feeling good because when my coach said my goal pace for these intervals was :49-:52 I was slightly panicked.
49, :51, :51, :51, :50, :51, :51, :51
Nailed it, again! and I felt amazing. I've learned two things :1. When you PR a race and hit your speed work early in the week faster than goal pace you will likely need to plan to speed up the next time around and 2. I am loving the speed work and progress I am seeing.

Happy running this weekend everyone!!