the 5 mile run and Forerunner 610!!!!

I am so beyond excited to be sharing this with you all, I am just about the happiest girl alive right now!!

But first, I have got to say - you guys are the best!!  Thank-you so so much for all of the sweet birthday wishes yesterday!  I had an AMAZING day!!! birthdays get better and better every single year!

....and a big part of what made the day incredible was...accomplishing my goal!!!!!  YES...I did it - the 5 mile birthday run!!! 

y'all know me enough by now to know I look like a freak when I run, right? ;)

{WITH...(did you catch it?) - the amaaazing Garmin Forerunner 610 GPS watch!!!  more on that in a minute}

It went really well, actually!!  It wasn't really all that difficult, which is amazing.  Even though it didn't turn out exactly the way I originally envisioned it.  Because when I set the goal, I had every intention of just adding on a few minutes every week and running it straight.  But...that didn't happen.

Instead, I got quite sick in August/September and didn't run for something like a month.  When I got back into it, I was slow, and sometimes only ran once or twice a week instead of 4 or 5.  The bottom line was that it was early fall and I wasn't nearly as strong as I was at the finish of the Couch25k.

So yes, I lost a lot of endurance.  But NO, I did not lose heart.  I am not a quitter and now was not the time to earn the title!  I started ramping up my training schedule the past month or so, until last week my longer runs were nearly 6 miles.  So I knew I could do it, with the interval walk breaks we were doing, but I knew it would be slow and I kind of wondered if it would count.



What happened, though, is that the walk breaks yesterday let me go faster during the running portions.  Usually in the 11:00 mile segment, sometimes in the 10 - our fastest was about 8:46.  So including a zillion walk breaks, we got it in a little over an hour.

Slow for most people?  Yes.  Progress for me?  Yes!!!

 The GREAT thing about accomplishing a goal, no matter how small it may be to other people, is that you know you have proven to yourself that you can do it.  And conquering yourself is I think the biggest part of running, because our bodies can usually do far more than our minds think we can.

I would not have been able to do it quite like that, though, if it wasn't for my beautiful Garmin!!  talk about an AMAZING birthday present!!!!!!!

She (he?) retails for nearly $400.  Waaaay out of my league.  I wasn't even considering the 610 as a possibility when I decided I was in the market for a GPS watch - it's the high-end running watch (touchscreen, anyone?!!!) out there right now and pretty much only the serious runners and athletes wear it because of how much of an investment it takes.  So I thought I was going to have to settle for something a lot simpler, but there were specific features I was looking for that some of the other watches just didn't have.

That's where God comes in.  Okay, He is in the picture the whole time.  But I know it was Him that specifically orchestrated this, because what's the chances of finding an amazingly incredible deal (basically a steal, y'all. yeah it's amazing.)  on a practically new-in-box 610 in another state and the guy agrees to mail it to you?!!!

I am so excited about this, because I love being able to know exactly how far I am going and my pace per mile, and "crunching my numbers" after my run so that I can train harder and faster.  Right now my thought is this - I'm 18, healthy as a horse, and basically in the prime of my life.  Why shouldn't I be able to do a 7:00 or 8:00 mile?

So LW I'm going to be training.  Hard.  I want to get faster, leaner, stronger, and I'm going to be sharing details with you along the way.  It's been an amazing journey so far and it's only getting better by the day. ♥

 
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Oh one more thing.  You know those videos when you look at yourself and realize everything looks perfect?

Yeah neither do I.

I definitely groaned over this one.  Either the video quality makes us out to be weirdos or we really ARE - you pick.  I know that I'm definitely not used to actually seeing myself as I talk (oh and my eyes were driving me crazy due to allergies!! - that's why I'm rubbing them....ugh). 

...but anyways, I promised a vlog!!  So without further ado, if you have 6:15 to spare, here we are!! :)  Basically the same things I'm talking about in the post, with more detail and a little bit of our family craziness!! ;)

Ha! :)

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So how have your runs been???

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Y'all are amazing!!  Have a beautiful day, give someone a really big smile, and don't forget to get out there and get some miles behind you this week! :)

Cheers!!! :)