After two weeks of cutting and successfully dropping five pounds I figured Erin and I deserved one of our favorite treats – pizza. She and I have collectively lost 10 pounds and I figure a bi-weekly pizza was well deserved. And so we got down on a medium mushroom pizza from our favorite delivery (and maybe a few cheesesticks…) and watched Rocky V last Sunday evening. It was a perfect Sunday evening.

What’s not perfect is how my intention to run on Tuesday morning fell through. I did the lazy thing and said “I’ll just do it in the evening”. I had leftover pizza for lunch and when I got home I was just dragging and ended up not running that evening either. I have a class on Thursday evenings so if I ran on Thursday it would have to be in the morning, which I intended to do, and again, failed to follow through with.

It’s not like I had fallen off or anything – I still never missed a day at the boxing gym and still lifted weights four days as usual. I was just feeling rough for some reason. I want to blame the bloody lovely greasy carb overload in the pizza but I really thing it was a combo of the sudden change in weather here in the hills of eastern Tennessee and my body just wearing out a little. Turns out I think my body really just needed that rest because Saturday morning was my next long run on my way toward half-marathon greatness…

…and it ROCKED! I rolled out of bed on Saturday morning and headed out after a good old-fashioned coffee cleanse. A little bit of stretching, a little bit of psyching up, and a new running playlist (Psychedelic Bollywood) later I realized something: It was cold. As. Shit. How did the cold creep in so quickly? Maybe I’m extra wimpy because I’ve lost most of my insulation over the last year?

I went from a week ago thinking mid-run “Gah, I need to get out of the sun…” sprinting toward the shadows, to saying “Gah, I need to get in the sun!” while gripping my phone through the sleeves of my shirt because I had pulled them down over my frozen fingers. I took about 3 minutes to warm up with a brisk walk before I found what I thought would be a good pace for the day’s mileage. I think it was Runner’s World that posted a while back that a lot of runners will walk 60s every 2 miles and it doens’t affect their time that much. I’ve done this a few times before and thought it helped me out so I set my mind to it again – just 2 miles and I get a 60s break. Let’s GO!

Only in 2 miles I wasn’t tired. My pace was still steady and I was feeling great. I was finally in the sun and was warming up a bit so I set my mind on mile 3 – I’ll give myself a 90s break then, right? I hit mile 3 and still wasn’t tired. Why rest? So I kept going. I don’t know what was wrong with me – I’m usually looking for any excuse to take a short walk – something in my shoe, stopping for a crosswalk or red light, maybe waiting for a stomach cramp to go away lest I seriously embarrass myself…

At mile 4 I finally decided I may need a short walk but at that point a lot of cheesy motivation came into my head. I had read a motivational sign the other day that said something like “The body can, it’s the mind that doubts” and I’m confident I’m stronger than my own mind. That kept me going. I could also hear Mick yelling at Rocky “I didn’t hear no bell!” So I kept going. I ended up finishing my run with no stopping. 6.51 miles. Not my longest run to date but it’s very close. Maybe I’ve found my race pace? It was the first real good run I’ve had in a while. This half is still happening!

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Side Note 1/2

I’ve made a bit of progress on my road to becoming a trainer at Title Boxing Club. Thinking I was going in to have my form evaluated, on Thursday I came in around mid-day and ended up leading a 30 minute mock class. I think it went well and my criticisms were minmal. There are a few things I need to work on and the next step is forming my own 30 minute class and giving it a mock run. I’m hoping to do that next week! I can’t wait to get this going!

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Side Note 2/2

On another side note I figured I’d go ahead and share some photos. I’m currently taking a non-credit photography class and have finally been given an assignment to photograph my favorite subject, whatever that may be. I took my camera out to Fanboy Expo yesterday and was actually pretty unhappy with the shots I got of cosplayers. Thankfully I got a few decent portraits of my favorite subject and one cool shot of a girl at the Thailand booth at Knoxville’s Asian Festival going on downtown (I also have some video of this that I hope to share soon). While I’m sharing photos, I figured I’d throw in some shots from a week or two ago, too, that I had on my SD card but haven’t shared yet.

You can see more of my amateur photography on my Flickr Stream.

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Stick around after this week’s table to see one more cool photo of myself with a sweet find I picked up at a new-ish antique mall we found in south Knox.

This week:

This Week’s Mileage:	6.51 Miles (10.48km)
This Week’s Avg. Pace:	11:27/mile (7:07/km)

And the YTD, as usual:

2015 Running
Time Period	Total Distance
Runtastic Runs (1/1-4/15)	56.51 Miles
5k-to-10k (4/15-6/21)	87.52 Miles
Runtastic Runs (6/23-Present)	1128.43 Miles
Total Yearly Miles:	272.46
Miles Left Until 2015 Goal (350 Miles): 77.54

And as promised, here’s me with a Wow Wee Chimpanzee, an animatronic monkey that I picked up:

https://instagram.com/p/89WJfXr2TT