School's Out!

Overwhelming feeling of happiness... the book has closed on this 2010-2011 school year and now it's officially summer!

Thursday's workout was five miles easy. I ran part of it with Bella, then dropped her off and finished my run. She can run really far in the winter but she gets too hot in the summer to go more than a few miles.

Yesterday Pete and I drove to VB to run at a park near the oceanfront. Pete took the day off, so I ran the 9 miler on the trails by myself. It was really nice and peaceful. I felt great and ended up running a lot faster than I was supposed to. The part of the trail that I ran on is mostly flat and is 3.5 miles to the trail center, so I turned around there and ran back to where I started from. After 7 miles I stopped my watch to get some gatorade and saw 49:00 mins! I used to run 7 min pace for most of my runs in college but now that I'm relatively out of shape I usually run 7:45 or even slower on easy days. Continuing on the trail after my brief stop, I made the decision to treat the last two miles like a cool-down, especially because this section of the trail is very uneven. I've been known to take a few tumbles on the trail (and on sidewalks for that matter). I turned the corner after crossing the access road, and saw the 3.5 mile marker... well that made a lot more sense. That probably added another minute to my 7 mile time. I shrugged it off with a whatever, continued on my "cool-down" 2 miles.

Pete picked up some sushi and drinks while I was running, so we went across the street to the beach after my run. I jumped in the water to cool off, and then we ate dinner on the sand. The waves were actually nice for Virginia Beach (which is known for ankle-high waves most days) so we watched some old guys surfing, then it started raining a few drops and a rainbow appeared. It almost felt like we were in Maui again... or not. We stayed to watch the sun set and then went home.

I'm about to do my 5 mile recovery run, and then get ready to go to graduation at the school where I work.

Happy Summer!!