A great start to my birthday week :)

What a day. Wow. I had planned on today being a complete crap shoot, but it came out pretty darn decent. Since I knew it was going to get hot, humid, and disgusting today, I planned to wake up at 5:15am and head out in the neighborhoods to get my run in. Well, 5:15 came and I decided it was still too dark for me to run (I REALLY need to get "dark gear" because the days are only getting shorter at this point). Repeat process again at 5:30 with one exception ... I decided I should at least get up and get ready to go so as soon as it was light enough that drivers would see my white shirt, I could go. The street lights were still on and I still had a little trouble reading my Garmin, but I went out around 5:45 (when I usually go out for road runs anyway).

The run went great. Once I hit my 0.5 miles of warm-up, I turned my Garmin away on my wrist so I couldn't focus on it and decided to pay attention to my body. I marked each walk/run transition with a "lap", so I could analyze it later ... and WOW was I surprised ...

Lap 1 (warm up) - 0.5mi @ 16:45/mi avg

Lap 2 - 2.2mi @ 11:41/mi avg

Lap 3 (water break) - 0.16mi @ 17:17/mi avg

Lap 4 - 0.72mi @ 11:20/mi avg

Lap 5 (cool down) - 0.25mi @ 16:57/mi avg

TOTAL = 3.83mi in 49:20.59 (avg of 12:52/mi)

My jaw literally dropped when I saw that my first "run" was 2.2 miles, non-stop. It was almost 26 minutes! That's a personal best for running on the road! Yes, I did the whole Couch to 5k program, but I did that on the treadmill and just never seemed able to do as well once I got out on the road. I've read before that running on trails, even with more walking breaks, trains your body much harder to the point that road running, at any distance, seems much easier. Apparently that little nugget of wisdom is true. If that's the case, I think I need to keep up this trend of running at the metroparks whenever possible. Running trails keeps my head straight too. Even though I can't remember one song I listened to on my iPod this morning when I was running, I know I would have been micro-analyzing how my body felt if I hadn't had my music to distract me a bit.

I have a goal of running/walking/hiking 25 miles this week for my 25th birthday ... I think that run was a pretty darn good start, if I do say so myself. lol

Working in the lab was just like it always is ... sitting there, typing on my laptop, highlighting things in papers I want to remember, scribbling notes on my already-scribbled-on pages, strange noises from the hall. Yep, typical day. Don't want to talk about how high my stress level is right now. I don't know how I'm going to pull this off.

I stopped at Wildwood to find this week's code word. I figured I would stop over at TBG and get that one too, but the rain started coming down just as I pulled in. I braved it with my tiny umbrella, but couldn't find it. I guess I'll have to check back over there later this week. I made a stop in at Secor too, since I knew I could drive all the way up to the cemetery and get the code without getting wet.

I left my phone in my bag for a while when I got home and ended up missing a call. I just started giggling when I finally got around to listening to it. It was someone from Metroparks, letting me know I was Week 6's winner! I won a $150 giftcard to the Anderson's and a $15 giftcard from PNC. Yippee.

And now ... as I'm typing this ... there is an entertaining conversation about planning a bachelorette party going on in facebook land.

I guess I'm getting my passport tomorrow while I'm out getting my new driver's license (boo on them for being pink now and not using an old picture! I LOVE my picture form when I turned 21!).

If the rest of this birthday week is anything like today, I'm going to be a very happy girl. And my fingers are still crossed for a certain someone to pick a side of the fence. And have the guts to do something about it. :)