I'm Hot!

I'm hot from my run, and in more ways than one (hey, that rhymes!) I'm hot because it turns out that even running at 7:30am is a hot, sticky disaster when it's July in North Carolina. And I'm hot in my father-in-law's terms, meaning I'm upset because once again, rogue dogs interrupted my run.

Across the street live the most vicious dachshund and chihuahua this world has ever seen. Those two dogs are absolutely insane, and you guessed it, are kept in the backyard day and night to bark at anything that goes by. I often hear them in the wee hours of the morning, barking at cars, and I always wonder how the owners aren't bothered by them. Anyway, this morning they escaped, as they occasionally do, and went two houses down from us to menace the poor beagle who is kept trapped on the outdoor deck day and night. The barking from all three parties started at about 7am and continued, non-stop, until I went outside with Moxie. Then they naturally attempted to chase us, so I turned right around, walked to their house and banged on the door until a very sleepy and half-naked man showed up. He seemed partially apologetic but also annoyed that I had woken him up. Luckily for him I'm not the swearing type or I would have regaled him with many profanity-laced stories about all the times his dogs have woken me up. He took them inside and put them out the back where they were happy to resume their barking. The great part was my sweet Moxie dog who was a little nervous with all the barking going on around her, but who stood there calmly and quietly while I talked to the guy.

So now that I've ranted about that, I'll talk about how running while coming down from an adrenaline high is not really very easy. I felt slower and more sluggish than ever, and did I mention how hot it was? I managed 17 minutes, so I'm slowly bumping up my time. My overall pace continues to hover at 10:28-I'd really like a 10 minute pace to be normal/slow so obviously I have work to do. Right now though is building time and distance, my husband doesn't want to hear it from me how slow I am until I'm backing to running for 30 minutes.

I May Never Be A Runner

I've been running here and there the past few weeks, with nothing all that exciting to report. In fact, my running has been the opposite of exciting. My best run as of late happened yesterday, and it lasted just 16 minutes. I'm trying desperately to get back in the game, yet not making any progress. 16 minutes is absolutely unacceptable to me, but I guess I'll have to be happy with that for now because I don't seem to be imporving at all.

My Garmin has been my faithful running partner, always there to helpfully point out just how slow I run. It drives me bonkers how slow I am. There is probably no hope of me ever having a group of people to run with, because I just wouldn't be able to keep up. The most frustrating part is that when I plug the Garmin in at home, the little chart that comes up shows your different paces, and which range they fall into "slow walk, walk, slog jog, run, etc". My running seems to hover between at a jog, so I guess technically I'm not running at all. You only merit being a runner if your pace is under 9 minutes, and even then you're a "slow" runner. Actual running kicks in at a 7 minute mile.

For now, I guess I'll just keep on jogging. As the blog says, I'm a girl who runs-kind of.

Super Fast....Kind Of

I'm having some painting done in my house today (hooray!) and had basically 12 minutes to run before the painters arrived. Okay, so maybe it was more like 20. But I wanted to do at least a mile and still have time to catch my breath before they arrived.

Moxie and I set off at a fast pace, and we managed one mile in 9:35. That's really fast for a slowpoke like me! I was so proud of myself (and Moxie) and would love it if that became our regular pace. Sadly though, I think we'll have to settle for our normal 11ish average. But right now my goal isn't speed, it's building distance!