First Week of Marathon Training Had Its Up And Downs...

Last week was the first official week of training for this April's Country Music Marathon. It started out pretty good but ended in failure...

My family was in town for the holidays meaning my diet was horrible from eating out so much and finding time to run was difficult. My first run on Tuesday morning went fairly well. It was 4.0 miles (supposed to be 3, but I opted to get in miles when I could) at a 10:21 pace. This was great for me because I used to be doing speed work outs at 10:30. Wednesday was supposed to be a 5 mile fun run and ended up at 5.3 miles at a 10:30 pace. Thursday was another 3 mile run but I ran to meet my family at breakfast which was 4.0 miles away and I ran it at a (wait for it) 9:28 pace!!!

With my weekly runs going so well I was very excited for the weekend runs. However, too much to drink on New Years Eve combined with my constantly on the move family made me too exhausted for a 5 mile pace run on Saturday. Since I had already put in some extra mileage I decided to skip Saturday's run. Sunday was my very first long run, at 8 miles. I decided to run from my house to a restaurant to meet my husband for dinner. I hate hate hate out and back runs so this would give me more positive motivation to finish the 8 miles. I ran and a pretty good pace for the first mile and a half. It was at this point in the run that I noticed I had a friend... and this is where things got interesting.

I had picked up a stray coming out of my neighborhood and he was running right along side me keeping my pace. I wasn't afraid of him or anything, but I was more worried about him getting too far away from home or getting hit by a car. I decided to pull off onto a side road and try to get the little guy some help. After calling the local police department, here's how my long run ended (at 2.59 miles - 10:39 pace):

It took two hours to catch the little guy but he's such a good dog I'm sure someone will adopt him.

Week two starts today! Lets hope its more successful (and less eventful) than last week :)