rest day!

just woke up from an hour and a half long nap!! it's the perfect day outside to curl up and take a nice long cat nap! I had two good runs these last couple of days bringing my weekly mileage up to 23 miles - not quite where i want it - but higher than it has been - so that's good. Friday night I set out for a nice 5-6 mile run around the nieghborhood. Lesson learned - although the portion of the street you are living on has clean sidewalks - does not mean all of the neighboring streets have clean sidewalks! I ran down my street and turned down a street that doesn't have sidewalks - first mile eight minutes flat - nice! then i hit the slush ... my next miles drop down to nine minutes flat b/c i couldn't get up the hills with the snowy slushish mess under my feet! I decided to name this run the "first annual bridget's five mile snowcone fun run and snowbank steeple chase"! (I'm working on the t-shirts now!) No i seriuosly got back some of my old high school hurdling form jumping over all the snowbanks the plows made at the end of people's driveways. Well it ended up being a decent run - i found a new neighborhood to explore - and some good christmas lights. i went back the next day to take a picture of this one house that has lights that are fake tulips in their flower bed - they're kind of hard to see in this picture.

So yesterday I DID NOT want to run. As i've told a lot of you - for months now i've been running 5-6 miles pretty much everytime I run. I haven't done a long run for months. However, now that i have decided to do the pig - i have no excuse to not start ramping up the long miles. So - i decided start off small - just do an eight miler on saturday - not exactly a long run - but bumping up the mileag a bit. all i can say - is thank god for steve - who literally forced me to go running. he said "just go - i'll see you when you are happy when you get back" i yelled that it was windy and cold and I was tired and he couldn't make me run. Well i got out there and quickly realized that one part of my tantrum was completely wrong - i twas not cold - windy yes - but not cold so i was a bit overdressed. but short of taking of my tights and running in my drawers there wasn't much i could do about it - and if i went back home i knew i was going out again. Well as i was still grumbling to myself about running and how heavy my legs felt when i stepped in not one but two puddles and got sprayed by a bus driving by. During my run i saw a huge hawk - i took a picture of that too. i'll have to get a phone with a better camera to document my runs. Well i ended up running a little over eight miles at a 8:35 pace. I'm really happy with that.

On a sad note - as i was writing this steve just got a call that a good friend from his work passed away yesterday. This guy battled leukemia, graph versus host disease and whole bunch of other things that i don't know if i would be strong enough to battle. In the end his body couldn't take anymore. Please say a prayer for him - he will be missed.