14K - Me Likey

Wheee - the long weekend is finally here! And the weather is supposed to be great so even better. I woke up at around 6am this morning, peeked outside and went back to bed for a bit longer. It was gorgeous out but I felt really, really tired from Friday's bootcamp so thought a bit more sleep would be good as I didn't want a repeat of last week. We had a super kickass bootcamp class Friday morning (thanks Christina!) with lots of running, sprints, squats/lunges and a ton of killer hillwork. There was this little section that is super steep and we must have gone up and down it 6 times and then at the very end she capped it off with wall sits. I'm surprised I still have legs, rather than just burnt little black stumps. Whew.

I ended up getting up around 9am and dragged my crickety body out of bed - my left shoulder has been giving me no end of trouble. It's been so incredibly achy, it actually wakes me up at night and my arm and hand ache as well. I saw my RMT yesterday and she suggested that maybe I get an X-ray to see if I might have arthritis since nothing seems to have been helping. Oh the joys of getting older! I popped an Advil for the shoulder, got changed, downed a banana and some Gu Chomps and we were on our way. Hubs is doing much better so I have my running partner back (yay!).

We went to a popular trail that is fantastic for training - nice soft chip, with kilometre markers and a perfect 10K loop around a lake. I felt pretty good the whole run, I didn't get that "OMG, I just want to die" feeling like I had last week and ran the 14K without stopping. At the last four kilometres I was in this total zone where I felt I could run forever and just hauled ass - what a total difference from last week. Here are my splits before my Garmin lost its signal at the 9K mark (not sure why):

1K: 6:31
2K: 6:05
3K: 5:50
4K: 6:04
5K: 5:54
6K: 6:10
7K: 5:57
8K: 5:48
9K: 5:40

I think my last few kms were probably around the 5:30 mark as I was definitely running faster than I was at the beginning. So I'm feeling pretty happy as I was feeling down last week about my pitiful performance. Great way to end my first month of marathon training!

Now for some R&R! Plans include a birthday party tonight, Ironman 2, dinner with Hubs and hunkering down with the LOST finale on Sunday (ZOMG, how is this going to end?!) and spending some quality time with my favourite anti-terrorist cutie on the Jack Bauer Power Hour (maybe Tony might come back and save Jack? maybe?). I love long weekends!