MISERABLE NINETEEN, DISCOVERY RUN, CAMPING

Discovery Run! One of many waits at a stoplight. Cool kids up in the front.

A week or two back I had a pretty great eighteen mile run with PMC. It was surprising given the distance and the fact it was after the beer mile the night before, but the weather was finally decent and everything clicked. I knew it was just a random good run though and tempered my enthusiasm accordingly. For every good run, there is usually a bad run. That bad run was the weekend before last (yeah, I'm a little behind).

I only got five hours of sleep (I forget why or what I was doing... oh, game night!). That, coupled with warm temperatures (85 when we finished), led to a very bad run. The type of run where I'm tired and starting to get sore only eight miles into the run. It sucked. It didn't help that a lot of it was along my much despised Springwater Corridor as well. Anyways, I made it through. It was 19 miles and it sucked. I was able to do it though, and the next day I wasn't even that sore. So perspective. My first twenty miler is coming up this weekend.

What else happened since last update? The Discovery Run in Tualatin where all these pictures are from. It was a lot of fun. If they had a quicker pace group I was maybe going to turn this into a tempo run, but the fastest was 9:00/mile and I wasn't feeling super spry anyways. Luckily I was able to convince Katie to join me at that pace and the run ended up being a lot of fun. We were out for about 55 minutes and only ran 35 of that. Funny how much time you wait at stoplights and in lines to get tickets. With the right mindset though it is a lot of fun!

He works hard for his tickets, ba dum bah, he works hard for
it honey, ba dum bah, he works hard for his tickets...

And finally, just got back from camping in Roseburg this last weekend. That was a lot of fun. It was our annual family reunion campout deal, so I took Brandon along for the third straight year, and we had a great time just hanging at the river playing and being lazy. Most years I have fit in a run during this time of twelve miles, but my new training method of not giving a fuck meant I got to take the weekend off. It was great! When Brandon asked "Are you going to have to run again?" acting all sad it was fun to say "Nope, not this weekend," and watch him perk up. There is a new sheriff in town and he doesn't give a shit.

Anyways, the break will be short lived. I'll be running twenty the next two weekends. This weekend off isn't going to kill me and might actually be a good thing. Rest my legs up before this increase in miles. I'll be back at the Umpqua at the end of August for my birthday campout... I'll probably make myself run then... too close to the marathon to take a weekend off... but hopefully I can get away with only twelve in a down week.