Shoot for the Stars

June's home in Enumclaw. 6:30 a.m. It was rainning this morning. I carpooled with Mishel, along with Niki from Mishel's place. There it was Cheri, Janet, and Anna who joined the run from June's house. June just met up with us later. We left a change of clothes at June's house for after the run. We ran the route up the steep hill and back past the mountain. Then we paralleled the 164 on a back road. I ran with Anna the whole way until Starbucks, bad mistake! She is really really fast! We kept under 9 min which is do able for me but hard on long runs like this one. We just got talking a lot and got to know each other better. We learned a lot and talked about some deep issues, such as loosing a close family member. She is such a strong person and amazing athlete. She is like a white female Kenyan runner. We then met up with the ladies from starbucks but we over jumped the loop that went right to starbucks and on the bike trail the ladies were already coming for us. It was Sunny and June who joined in. Then we did our usual route. The last 2-3 miles I really dropped back in place and felt so tired like I wanted to walk. We did talk some I know. The time wiht 10:00 min is the one we walked for sure. Near the end I ran with Cheri and she helped me mentally to keep on going. Mishel ran up with Nikki and Anna. Tough run but boy was it good! We got to all eat at the Kettle in Enumclaw to celebate Cheri's bday. What a huge portion they give! There was no way I could eat all of it! How funny! You even get a tshirt if you eat all of it!, Something to work towards!

Mishel's house. 5:30 a.m. Angela and Cheri met up with us at Mishel's home. It was actually a lot warmer than I had expected so I wasn't wearing my long sleeved shirt for long at all. I caught up with Angela and it was nice to see how her weekend went and all the stuff she is doing with her daughters. Mishel had a sore throat so she was really lagging today. She said she felt like she was on auto pilot. I ran her speed a lot of the time in the back because I am still sore from Sunday run, what a big jump! I am proud but didn't know if I wanted to do quite that far of a jump. Usual route today. Mishel walked up the hill. I think we walked just for a tiny bit after Mishel got up the hill and tha tis why mile 3 is slow. Overall, good run, just sore on the hamstrings.

Auburn Riverside HS. 5:30 a.m. Nikki met up with me at the track and we worked hard on speed work. She hadn't ran speed work in a long time so she would run most of the way hard and then walk the turns. We ran first for 1 mile to warm up. Then she was in lane 1 and I was in 2. We did 4 sets of 1/4 mile. In between we would walk 1/4 of a mile after each sprint. It was a great work out! It is always hard to run fast like that! I felt it went really well. It was very cold this morning though! Then when we were done we jogged 1 more mile. Total work out: 4 miles (1 mile was walking)

Cheri's house. 5:30 a.m. Mishel and I walked to front of BV and there Niki picked us up to head to Cheri's place for a fast 10k run. We wanted to work more on our speed this time but were all kinda tired/sore. It was very foggy this morning. Angela met us there at Cheri's. I think Angela was a little upset on about mile 4 when we just started to increase our time by a lot. Niki just took off when we headed down the hill. We did the route where we turned L and did a loop to 200 street. There were some hills which made it hard but good training for the 1/2 coming up. It was a tough run! Near the end Mishel wanted to walk some. Cheri and I decided to just finish the run by keeping the running pace. Mishel was right behind us when we finished but she was still battling a cold.

 TT: 53:55   Avg: 8:59   Max: 6:53

 Splits: 9:12, 9:15, 9:36, 8:31, 8:37, 8:45