My first run in three months

Last night, I headed out on my first run pretty much since my last marathon (Minneapolis, on June 6th). As I mentioned, of course I picked the hottest day of the summer to go for it! The mercury was still at 90 degrees when I headed out around 6:30pm to meet my running group.

I got to the meeting spot (72nd street entrance to the park) about 10 minutes early, so sat on the bench and played with my phone while I waited. However, it was soon 6:59pm and I didn’t see anyone who looked like they might be for the running group. There were plenty of runners going by (I had forgotten how much fun it is to people watch at the park!), but no one with an Urban Feet shirt on like the Meetup organizer was supposed to be wearing. Just as I was about to look up his number on the website and give him a call, another member of the group showed up (identifiable by his Urban Feet shirt… apparently I am the only one who doesn’t have one). There were only four of us running that night – two people had bailed to go swimming or stay home and eat ice cream instead. We are hard core!

We headed up to the reservoir, did two loops, and then back down to the entrance. When combined with my 1 mile run over to the park, that made 5 miles – not bad at all! I felt pretty good throughout, too, though my legs were pretty sore from the asskicking I had given them the day before doing strength training at the gym. But the fact that running wasn’t particularly hard made me hopeful that I can actually do a decent job at the Hartford Marathon next month (eep).

And of course, the whole reason I got through it? The promise of Dive 75 and beer at the end! For my first drink of the night, I chose the Southhampton White – not my favorite white beer, but it was pretty good. However, after realizing how drunk just one beer got me, I passed on any more and opted to go meet my other friends at Amsterdam Ale House. There, I chose the Ommegang Rare Vos – a bit darker than I was expecting, but still tasty. But after having that, I excused myself to stumble home – made even more difficult by how sore my back was from the day before. I couldn’t believe how drunk I was after just two beers! I’ve forgotten what running will do to you…

This morning, I set my alarm for 7am – pretty late, I thought, since I went to bed at 10pm. However, I ended up snoozing until 8am – my back was also really sore and I just wanted to sleep longer! However, that meant that I missed out on the chance to do a really long workout, and in true “go big or go home” style, I ended up not going to the gym at all before settling down to work for the day. Oops!

I ate pretty lightly all day though (breakfast: smoothie; lunch: homemade veggie soup; dinner: light peanut stir fry from Mario Lopez’s Extra Lean), and at night, I hit the gym for 45 minutes of intense elliptical. 4.75 miles, baby! Okay, so it wasn’t the best workout day in the world, but it still wasn’t bad. I made dinner in between the elliptical and when I thought I would go back and do more elliptical during Top Chef, but ended up being way too tired. Bedtime for this girl! Hopefully I can do better on the workout front tomorrow.