The Tortoise and the Hare(s)

I am going to try to condense this as much as possible- I am super busy, but I have to add this because it's so great.

So, I was walking up the hill to the park yesterday (after I dozed off on the couch for a bit- I slept like crap Sunday night!). I stopped at the top of the stairs and was catching my breath and stretching my legs a little. I looked across the field, and saw something moving. It was a rabbit!! About a month ago when I was getting the mail, I saw a rabbit hopping in our neighbor's yard, but I thought maybe someone's pet got loose. But apparently we have wild rabbits roaming our 'hood. As I ran around the park, I realized there were actually 2 rabbits- oh so cute! One ran into the trees, but the other one just sat there on the grass.

Anyway, I learned my lesson about cutting my warm-up short  from my 3-mile run last week, so this time I made sure to do a decent warm-up. I started running at 4:22 and .33 miles. The first mile was decent pace, and the second mile was pretty good, too. I figured since I was doing all right, I would just keep going as long as I could before taking a walk-break. Then I just kept going and going... and going and going. I actually made it a whole 3.1 miles (5k- yeah!) before I walked. And even then, I just considered it my cool-down since I only planned to do a short run. And even better, guess what my time was for that 3.1 miles (not including the warm-up)? Yep- it was under 30:00. In fact, it was 29:10!!! I was trying to figure out what was different, and how I was able to do it. I noticed that my breathing was a lot better throughout the whole run, and I ate a Curves chocolate peanut bar right before I headed out the door. When I got home, I was telling the hubs how hot it was out there (as I huddled in front of the a/c vent, dripping sweat), and that there wasn't a breeze like there had been recently- hello! There wasn't a breeze. It wasn't windy like usual. I think that's a big reason why I was able to run a lot longer. Either that, or I am just getting super-conditioned. LOL.

Oh, and the other great thing about my run, is that even with my warm-up and cool-down, I ended up running 3.71 miles in 37:11, which makes exactly a 10:00 pace- my fastest yet, wahoo! So even though I didn't get a nod from Lance or Tiger, or even Joan Benoit-Samuelson, I was pretty stoked.

And to round out the day, the Hubs decided he wanted to order from Chili's, but I was good and ordered a grilled  chicken salad with dressing on the side (of course, using the dipping-fork technique). It even had mandarin oranges and pineapple. I'm not sure how many calories it was, but it was mostly lettuce, so it couldn't have been too bad, right?