ON THE VERGE

I've been on vacation this week, which makes it hard to update my blog and keep up with other bloggers. We didn't go anywhere for vacation, just hanging out around here with the girls and doing fun local stuff like picking strawberries, going to the water park, watching Cars (2 thumbs up), etc.

I'm trying to get consistent with my running and build my mileage back up. I've basically been running between 7-9 miles any time I head out the door this week. I did that 3 days in-a-row before taking yesterday off - and falling asleep on the couch at 8 PM. Who knew vacationing could be so tiring. After running my last 3 runs in the evening, this morning I decided to get back into a morning routine. I was out the door at 7 AM and managed 8 miles at a hair under 8:00 pace.

It's interesting what the mind goes through during an injury. There were times where I thought "What else can I do if I can't run? I could do some mountain bike races, rollerblade races, work on rollerskiing, etc." Now that I'm back to running, all those thoughts are out the window and I'm thinking about races I want to run and times I want to achieve.

Ever look at race results and think about how we'll you'd have placed if you had run? I couldn't help but look at all the races I didn't run this spring. And I can't help but think I'm on the verge of "greatness." Just kidding. "Greatness" is too strong of a word. But dare I say, "the next level." Seriously, all I would need to do would be to improve by 10-15 seconds per mile and I'd be "all set." Of course if that happened I still wouldn't be happy - but it'd be a start.

I still find it mind-boggling that less than 2% (133 of 6,913) of the runners at Grandma's broke 3 hours. Sure the conditions were crappy, so I'll "give" you 10 minutes. Only 242 runners or 3.5% broke 3:10. Heck, even in my age-group 3 hours would have placed me 11th. Results from the half marathon are similar as less than 2% of the 5,000 finishers broke 1:25 - a time that would have placed me 8th in my age-group.

So I'm using these results as motivation to not only get back to where I was earlier this spring, but to take it to the next level. Now I just have to wrap my mind around the whole process of running every day (or twice-a-day) and building my mileage again. Vacation is over...in more ways than one.

Quote of the day:
"I can do anything." - Katie, my soon to be 3 year old, as she was climbing up a small slide instead of using the stairs