Ooooohhhh....shiny!

As part of my "chase down that PR" training plan, I had a 6 miler scheduled for yesterday. I started fueling on Friday evening by carb-loading on this:

I had every intention of preparing this recipe myself. I found it, bought the ingredients and then realized that The Pilot was going to be heading to bed around 7:30 pm on Friday night (a 4:30 am report time means he was up crazy early on Saturday morning). By the time I got home from work and prepared this, he would have been in bed. Fail. But, because he's awesome, he made it instead and I ate it. (I did clean up the mess after so I like to think that makes up for my lack of dinner planning skills!)

Anyways...I headed out on Saturday morning to get 2 miles in before meeting up with some of the TNT alumni. It was pretty cold (30!) and I was having a hard time getting my asthmatic lungs and cantankerous shins warmed up. I ended up walking more than running for those 2 miles. Bleh.

After meeting up with the alumni, I ended up running alongside Kim, one of the walkers I've been coaching for the past year+. Yes, she was race walking and I was running. I like to think that is because I'm such a fantastic coach and taught her some stellar race walk technique. In reality, her legs are about a foot longer than mine and she's a natural race walker....and I'm a slow runner. Anyways, it was nice to have someone to chat with for 2 miles. Despite my warnings, she is signed up for the Goofy Challenge and we will be traveling to Orlando together in January. She wants that Goofy medal and I want a PR!

I only needed 4 additional miles so after 2 miles with Kim, I turned around to head back. I did take a 30 second walk break for some water and to stretch out my shins. As I was running, something shiny kept catching my eye. It happened during the Air Force 1/2 Marathon as well. One of our TNT alums, Jenny, was selling shoe charms as a fundraiser awhile back. And I have a hard time saying no to a fundraiser, especially one this cute. Well the shoe charms have some bling on them and on a sunny day, my feet are sparkling when I run!

Check out my TNT and Tri shoe charms (as well as my toe emergency tag):
Despite the shiny distractions, I ran the entire way back and finished 6 miles in 1:22. A little slower than my pace from last weekend and definitely not a PR pace. It's still 8 minutes faster than I could have race walked it so I'm still on the right track. I'm hoping I just need to give my body a little time to adapt to running in the colder temperatures again and that increased miles and pace during the week will bring down my weekend times.

This yummyness was waiting on me when I got home! I was refuled and ready to get on with my day.