Sunday Nap Fail

I’ve shared before that my version of a Perfect Sunday includes a nice cat nap on the sofa with a baseball game on the TV.

Today was ripe for just such an event.

Up at 5:30 in order to be alert, dressed and having eaten something to get me through a long run. I met the girls at 7am at our new favorite trail for just such long runs that are supposed to be mostly flat.

“Mostly” is relative in this area of course. It just means there are not any killer hills like Torrey Pines or even the ones around my neighborhood that I climb 2-3 times during my mid-week runs. But yes, there are still some hills.

As this was my first LONG trail run in nearly two months I did wonder how it would go for me. I was pleasantly surprised! They kept up a respectable 11 min mile “warm up” (for them) pace as we ran west-east and I was able to keep up without feeling too wiped out. Still, that was over 2.5 miles out and they wanted to keep going another mile or so east before turning around. Since I had never run that leg I needed to keep on keeping up as they started some faster paced intervals. I was mindful that what goes east, must come west and that at least until we got back to the point I knew, I had to keep up. After that I figured I could go as slow as I wanted and/or walk the rest of the way back if I felt truly exhausted.

So – I kept going though I eased up a little and made it out to the furthest point with them and then back to the more familiar trail. So now we are 5+ miles into it and I’ve kept it at 11-12 min mile pace the whole way. I still feel pretty good but I told the girls to go ahead and not worry about me but that I wanted to be able to walk if I needed to without feeling guilty. So I backed off to around a 13 min mile pace. Around the 6 mile mark I could start to feel my toe getting blistery again, but was otherwise still not feeling too bad. At mile 7 the t-bands on both my knees started barking. Not enough to stop, but enough so that I actually knew that if I did stop, I might not get started again so I pushed through and kept turning my legs over.

I ran all the way to the end point including the last pretty steep uphill to the parking area and clocked in with 7.7 miles in 95 mins.

And I didn’t feel too bad!

They took off to go for their swim workout and I went home to shower and tend to my blistery toe. Well, I got out of that shower and walked down the stairs and…no…check that…I *limped* and *gimped* down the stairs because my knees were not having any of that non sense!

Fine – grabbed some food, settled down to watch Up & MHP and then started to get sleepy so I switched to the MLB network and was just settling down to doze off when….

“Toot!” went my text notification train horn.

Eve inviting me to join them for post workout pizza & beer.

Fine – trudged out and did that.

Came home. Fiddled on the internet. Finished the DVR shows for real this time and switched back to the MLB network and just dozed off when…

“Toot!” – 15 looking for a pick up from school. Huh? Turns out he volunteered at a Pop Warner camp today to earn some community service hours and his dad couldn’t pick him up yet.

So I brought him home, fed him, fed the cats and then gave up on any nap plan because I really needed to get groceries. Couldn’t convince him to help me even though his dad wouldn’t pick him up until much later so I limped and gimped around the store and came to find….

A quiet house.

Huh? Where’s 15? His shoes are still in the garage so he wasn’t picked up?

Go upstairs to his room to discover – he’s NAPPING!

Sigh….well, at least one of us got to do that today.

(This bonus blog post brought to you by Procrastination. I’m supposed to be researching article topics for a new website. You can see how well that is going :-))