Today my long run was a nine miler. I mapped out a course and made sure I had pasta for dinner last night. I was in bed by 1 a.m. and woke up at 9ish to get ready to run.

Chowed down a PowerBar, drank some water and threw a pack of Sharkies in my running pack and was out the door by 9:45ish.

If you noticed the title of this post, I was not feeling this run.

But let's focus on the positives first:
I finished the entire 9 miles.
By some miracle I ran an average of 11:12 minute miles.
My final time was 1:41:17

And now for the not-so-positive aspects of this run:
It sucked from the minute I started.
My legs felt like I dead weight.
I never hit my stride.
I had to start walking at the 55 minute marker (which was when I ate the Sharkies so I'd have energy for the last 4ish miles)

In the end:
After I had to start walking the first time, I walked for about five minutes while I was eating the gummies and then started running again and kept that up for another 12 minutes or so. After that I had to switch the run 5 minutes walk two minutes method.

I'm not sure how with all that walking I was able to finish in the time I did. I went back and re-mapped my course when I got home, and it still magically said nine miles.

So I guess another big positive is that even though I had to start walking I was able to keep my times consistent. Unfortunately I don't have splits, but I think the first few miles I had to be smoking even though I was trying to tell myself to run slowly.

Now I'm going to go rest my heavy legs and do all sorts of fun things like laundry and grocery shopping....you know you're jealous haha!

Catch ya back here Monday.

Lots of catching up to do.

Soccer on Wed. night was tons of fun. It was a pretty close game for a while, but then we ended up losing 3-1. It was a bummer, but we still had a blast.

The only bad part was that my friend and I were running late because we got out of work late so we didn't really have time to warm up before heading into the game. As a result, I tweaked my right quad.

I was playing defense in the first half and felt a dull pain a little bit during half time, but I stretched it out and figured I was good to go back on D for the second half because we had plenty of subs. I played for a while and then got subbed for which was good news. But then one of our mid's needed a sub really badly and no one volunteered to go in so I said I would.

Bad decision. I spent the night with an XL Icy-Hot patch slapped on my quad and a bag of frozen veggies on my right knee (I got decked by an opposing player and have quite the bruise to show for it.)

Thursday morning I lifted upper body at the gym and thought about walking on the treadmill to keep the quad loose. It felt OK so I thought I'd try a light jog. Bad decision number two. I stopped right away though and stretched it out.

The quad seemed to get better as the day went on and then this morning I thought I'd take it for a spin in cycling and see how things went. Surprisingly no pain at all. (Could be because I slathered on some Bengay last night to help...nothing like the smell of Bengay in the evening haha)

Cycling was awesome. I got such a stellar workout. It was a great way to blow off steam because my personal life is stressing me to the max. I don't like posting too much personal stuff on here, but suffice it to say the male gender is not on my good side right now (sorry fellas!)

As far as the new shoes decision. I think I'm going to go out for my 9 miler tomorrow morning in the ones I have now and see how it goes from there. I may just buy the new shoes anyway because I'm going to need them eventually. More on that decision to come.

I feel like this morning's run was the first solid one I've had in a while. Things felt pretty good and I was able to push the speed on the treadmill to 6.5.

I did my usual warm up and then started pushing the speed by .5 every five minutes. I topped off at 6.5 from minutes 15-20 and then brought it down to 6.0 til 25 minutes and then dropped it to 5.5 to 30 minutes.

I kicked it back up to 6.0 from 30-35 and finished off the last five minutes at 5.5.

The only thing that bothered me was my left heel a little bit in the beginning. It faded after about 5 minutes or so, but I'm wondering if this might be an early warning sign that it's time to get new shoes.

My biggest fear with the upcoming race is that my shoes will bonk out the day of the race and that would probably be the worst thing in the entire world.

So what do you guys think. Time to go cash in for a new pair of Mizunos?