New?

What is new? you ask.

Well, a lot of things are new: the new 2010 Honda Civic, a new perfume or something from Paris Hilton, a new little bird that has hatched from an egg, a new little bunch of sea turtles who have hatched from a bunch of little eggs and are now squirming down the beach to get in the water. Everyone wants to go swimming, it seems.

Also new is Charles' training schedule. I was once doing the 6 days a week training, with 1 day off, and that was okay, but I guess a lot of the time I didn't want to go run. Especially in the summer when Ben would try to push me out the door at 7 am. That was pretty early.

Well, I guess it wasn't that bad getting up early. It was actually sort of nice to get out there in the fresh morning air and what not, and sometimes fun stuff would happen, like finding a huge painting next to a dumpster and then carrying it a half mile home. Good stuff, it was.

The 6 days a week schedule sort of dissolved, and then about 3 weeks ago I had this idea of doing a 2 day on, 1 day off thing. It seemed like a good plan, like I could get in a bunch of miles by doing a 12-8 day and then a 15-5 day, followed by a lazy day off.

For some reason, I only did this for about one cycle (minus the second run of the day). I lasted a whole 2 days doing that schedule!

Now, for the past 2 weeks or so, I have been doing a 1 day on, 1 day off schedule, and have had very good luck with it. The runs I have seem to be much more enjoyable, and I always want to get out there and go far. The most recent runs have been 20, 12, 20, 20, 20, and then today I am planning on going 20 also. After 15 I usually stop and have a banana or a piece of bread with some peanut butter and honey, thus making the cool down 5 miles easier.

The other day I had a spectacular run! The 15 was done at a pretty good clip, like my legs were getting used to rolling for such long distances. Then I stopped for about 2.5 minutes to eat half of a banana, then say a person go by on rollerblades being pulled by a dog. I decided to go get them, and blazed the next mile. I decided to keep the pace up (as best as I could), and did the next 1.5 at a fast pace too. Then I turned around and cooled down 2.5. A good time it was! I got in a nice 15, a tempo, and a cool down, all in one run!

Today, I went out for a 20 miler, and wanted to get in some fast miles, so after 5.5 miles I started picking it up. I eventually picked it up and up and finished off with a very fast mile, probably the fastest mile I have run this year (not that I have ever ran a flat out mile, but I was very satisfied with the time). After 17, I met Lisa at the car to refuel with a small orange and part of a banana...was going to go 3 more, but then decided just to have a nice romantic walk with her.

On the walk, I saw this gangly spider hanging from a tree...and then somehow it sort of started to swing towards me. I hate spiders, so I started backing away...and then I almost ran into some guy who was running. He was probably really mad, or thought it was really funny. I couldn't tell.

That is all. I am going to eat some snacks now.