the mother of all workouts

As it turns out (this is really complicated so try to follow along), running more + blogging infrequently = MANY RUNS to write about in each entry. Like I want to update you on my last two runs but one of them was last week, and I can not really even remember what happened to me at lunchtime, so this is impossible. I think I ran 3.6 miles on Saturday. I think it sucked?

AH yes. It's coming back to me. I have been having a lot of random joint pain in my hands and it was freaking me out, and I don't have insurance at the moment so I got up early on Saturday and hoofed it over to the east side to see a free doctor. It was fine and I am fine; it turns out when you go from not sitting in front of a computer all day for five months to sitting in front of a computer all day for two weeks, your body gets mad. Anyway, after the clinic my dad took me to breakfast where I ate an omelet the size of my face. Five hours later I went running and realized about a block into it that I had apparently digested zero of that omelet because I spent the rest of my run burping it up. That was an attractive and uplifting story; let's just move on to the main event: Mother's Day.


Me and my mama at dinner after my grad school graduation in 2008.

Then I made her do the Miley face with me:


I love Miley, did I ever write about that here? I do, for real. Anyway, Mother's Day. So, I am the product of two very active and twitchy parents who are not particularly good at sitting still, ever. My dad has a tendency to get up and wander around looking at things when he is bored, my mom is fond of packing her days full of activities so that she doesn't have any down time at all, ever, EVER. My mom and I are also both broke and whiny about money so instead of doing a normal Mother's Day thing like, I don't even know, shopping? Pedicures? (Seriously, I lack any knowledge of what a normal mother/daughter activity would be.), we decided to bike over to the nature conservancy, then I would run and she would bike, then we would bike some more.

So that is what we did. Biked the three miles there. I ran 5.2 miles while she biked, and then we biked 10 more miles. It was sunny and hot and I smelled super great, and the run felt kind of crappy, it turned out that was because I did the entire 5.2 miles at an 8:30 pace. That, by the way, is SUPER slow when you are on a bike and my mom still stayed with me basically the entire time, which was great. (I had told her beforehand that I would probably run at about a 9-minute mile pace and that she was totally free to leave me and circle back if she wanted; about halfway through she said "I think you go faster when I bike with you!")

After our exercise extravaganza we got some breakfast. I had forgotten to bring a change of clothes to her house so I had to borrow things. My mom and I are not the same size or the same height so in addition to my smelling super great, I also looked super hot. After breakfast, we took the dog for an hour-long walk. Then my mom was all, what should we do now? And I was all, do whatever you want, woman, I'm exhausted. And then I came home and ate some pita chips and collapsed.

I neglected totally to ice or foam roll when I got home (on account of the exhaustion) so my legs are still a little bit hurty today. I am planning to run about 4 miles tonight anyway, and then a super-easy and slow run Thursday in preparation for the fake Legend of Arlage 5K on Saturday (yes, I am still the only dailymile participant). I can't decide what I want my goal time to be, I was thinking under 25 minutes but I feel like that'll leave me in a world of hurt. My real goal is just to try to not run like an idiot. The last 5K I ran was last June and I basically sprinted the first mile and then wanted to die the rest of the time. It paid off, sort of; I was 10th out of 80 women with a time of 25:39 and essentially zero training, but I feel like if I had tried to pace myself a little more I may have done even better. So that will be my REAL goal. I am not by nature a patient person or particularly good at holding back at much of anything, so this should be interesting at best.