Procrastinating!!

I have been reprimanded by some people to get moving on my blog!! I'm so behind....I know....It's so nice to be loved and to know that people actually look forward to what I have to say---however long winded it may be =0 and if you know me well, you know it usually IS long winded =0.

SO! Why the delay in blogging? Well, I haven't been very inspired these days to write---so i'll do a quick recap of the last week or so of training and other random thoughts. I had a tough last two weeks---I was responsible for wearing my heart rate monitor strap at every workout (minus the swims) and report back to my coach what my heart rates were. It was actually really fun and made me extremely diligent in my workouts. I was absolutely exhausted after the last two weeks though, most of my heart rate monitor training meant I was going super hard and seeing what I could get my heart rate up to. Sounds easy enough right? Well, my coach had me attempting to maintain my heart rate for certain periods of time and that was really hard! It was also hard to go "easy" on the day she told me to go easy. Anyway, the point of this mumbo jumbo for me and the rest of you means that I can now train "normally"...meaning before I think I was attempting every work out to be a race....defeating the purpose of going easy in some workouts for "active recovery." So---now my coach will give me a workout with prescribed heart rates so I know how hard or easy to go =0.

I forgot to do a St. Patty's Day race report for the 10K. Gorgeous morning...I must say it was quite a challenge to maintain my pace for 6 miles..a lot harder than the 3.1 miles the week before for my 5K. I managed to finish in 47:14, so that's an average of a 7:36 mile. The first mile I found a friend so I was kind of cruising and then I realized, ok, Amanda is going to be pissed if I don't give this my "all" here...so I took off and if I hadn't been chatting, I think I could have finished about a minute and a half sooner maybe? ANYWAY!

Who was I most impressed with at the 10K? Dave!! He finished 4th in his age group out of 169 and 30th overall (out of about 1700 people)....averaging a 6:08 mile pace...I really don't know how he does it......I don't think I could physically ever move that fast! He was excited with his race and celebrated with a beer and pizza promptly after the race which finished around 9:00 a.m...never too early for pizza and beer. I however took one look at the "beer garden" and I thought I was going to throw up....I think i've been out of college too long.....could I finally be growing up? Finally willing to let a free beer go?? Who knew that time would ever come??

Truth be told, I wanted to post this blog with Easter pictures....but, I am patiently waiting for my mother-in-law and future sister-in-law to email me pictures if they can figure out how to do that! (Hi Bonnie!) We were over in Scottsdale, AZ for the night (flew out Saturday and came back to San Diego on Sunday)....it's an hour flight and totally worth the time since we were able to be with Dave's parents, Grandparents, Great Aunt Eve, his brother, Brieanna and Bella our niece......we decorated eggs, ate way too much chocolate and made the discovery that Reeses Pieces come in larger Easter sizes and in egg shapes at Easter. Brunch on Sunday was awesome..and we came home Sunday night.

Did I train this weekend? I did...I can hardly believe it myself. With our whirlwind trip, I managed to stick mostly to my schedule. I got in my long 3 hour ride on Saturday before our flight left..and got up early on Sunday before brunch and did my 80 minute run at altitude.

Oh, you didn't realize that Scottsdale, Arizona isn't at sea level? News to me to....it's at about 1200 feet above sea level.....go figure. So, instead of doing my 2x10 minute hard efforts, I was stuck just "climbing" for 20 minutes...and then some. Here is a rather boring map of my run. I wanted to show the elevation, but it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to put this in here...so you'll have to live with this!!


If you want to see the elevation click here: http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/az/scottsdale/732102640
And then at the bottom of the map you can see the way the run actually went (slightly hilly). The funny thing is, it isn't a huge "gain" in elevation, but just running at altitude and having ANY type of hill for me at this point was interesting because i've been running primarily flat stuff with some hills here and there!

I also saw one of THESE in my run..about 20 feet from me. He ran away and I was proud of myself for not freaking out--he ducked back under a bridge and I just ran past it.....and he was nowhere to be seen. I've seen quite a few while i've been training starting back in Colorado last year, apparently they're more afraid of us then we are of them:
Hopefully more exciting news as the week goes on...things are rather tame in the world of training. I'm also busy studying for my certification as a rehabilitation counselor, (the CRC exam)....it's on April 25th, so I have just enough time to start studying =0.

Thank you guys for always reading and writing cool things to me--it's easier to write about my training here than it is to email people about it! I really really appreciate all your support and your thoughts!!!