Freight train on the track

It's been a hectic few days around here, my primary sitter is on vacation (hooray for the secondary!), the Bubbaloo's birthday is just a few days away, my mom's coming to town and it's been raining for over a week. Whew! The rain probably doesn't have that much to do with anything except that it requires much more creativity in channeling the munchkins' energy so it ebbs away appropriately throughout the course of the day, leaving them with just enough in their fun meters to brush their teeth, take a bath, read some stories and crash out at bedtime. This is a delicately calibrated operation, mind you, and trying to replicate it even once has been nigh impossible.

The Bubbaloo expending his energy meter 

Making frozen banana, fresh strawberry and chocolate swirl
(I add a smidge of milk, but that's it!)

The Pumpkin Noodle helps with blender ops

Yum!

On my end, I bounced back nicely from the Endless Summer Run and so, Monday decided to extend my typical 4-miler into an 8-miler, which ended up being a 9-miler. I was in good company with Mike D. and Kevin K.; Mike is training for his fall marathon under the tutelage of Tom Clifford of Without Limits, so he's been doing some serious mileage. He was kind enough to call me nuts (regarding the race series) and let me tag along for his run, which for that day was 13 miles.

We took off at a leisurely 8:35 pace, which we picked up slightly as we made the first turnaround at 2.5 miles. We then seemed to keep picking up the pace, depending on the topic of conversation, and so we did a lot of accordion running through the middle of the run, of which I am not a fan, but at least I know that I can pick it up without it really feeling terribly difficult. Of course, lest I start to feel like I am getting into some sort of real running shape, at 8.4m, Mike said, "Let's run it in," and started hoofing it. I foolishly followed and managed to stay within 20ft of him, and we ran the last bit at a very clean 6:45 pace (or he did, I was a couple of seconds back). Still, the overall pace for the entire run was 8:23, not too shabby. I'll take it.

Today was a brisk 4.5 miles but more significantly, I am adding (under the direction of my PT) some leg strengthening in with lunges, body-weight squats, step-downs and single leg sit-downs. This is in addition to all my stabilization exercises that I do for my core. Super excited about these as I think they will help greatly with both fatigue and recovery as I head into the longer training runs and races for the fall.

Coming back like a freight train. Boom.