a "special" mother's day

It was a beautiful day - simply perfect! It was sunny, a comfortable temperature in the 70's with a slight breeze. If only the weather was like that every day year round...

My parents and Steph's parents and her sister all came over for a big Mother's Day brunch. I had hashbrowns, sausages, bacon and eggs all going at the same time - quite a production if I do say so myself. Steph had also made some incredible coffee cake and had gotten some fresh strawberries. It was a feast for the senses... The rest of the day was spent lounging, or at least most of it, though I started consolidating my running gear to one location and also took apart my treadmill to examine it - just to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I am no treadmill repair guy, but the blackened spot on the motor control card right at the wire connection seemed like it just might be the problem. The next step is to see how much $ it will cost...

My run yesterday was good. I was tired, but determined to run 8 miles. Luckily I had Brooke for company and like clockwork our miles raced by. It is always great to catch up and get a long run in at the same time - very efficient that way.

We had a bit of a surprise on our run as we started to head out the back of the state park and pick up the Fall Creek Trail, but when we got there they were in the middle of ripping up the bridge (and it was about time! There were patches of patches - it was in terrible shape and somewhat dangerous to run on with all of the potholes and uneven surfaces). We even asked if we could run through, but they said there were holes in the deck and it was a liability issue. No problem. We just stayed in the park and made up our mileage that way. We ran a very consistent pace for the first few miles, then we got just a little faster, finishing up our last mile at a 9:03/mile pace. Overall we were at a 9:23/mile pace and this was with hills.

I am shuffling my running schedule around so I can get my long runs into double digits before mid-June. Pfitz has me starting the 18 week training program with an 11 mile long run for the first week. I have some time to get there, but with training starting soon I have some work to do. I had mentioned it before, but this is going to be a busy summer all around. It doesn't look like we will have much of a vacation this year and we had anticipated this last year, so we made sure we enjoyed ourselves out in Cape Cod. My heart longs to be there right now - running along the beach, the sound and the smell of the ocean in the air... someday we'll go back... but for now it is getting my list of "to-do's" together and start checking them off. I have a good start on the mulching and landscaping this year and have a little more to do, but on top of this there is the painting of the exterior trim, some interior renovation of one of out bedrooms and some furniture refinishing... I have until the end of November to get most of this done, but quite a bit of this has to happen this summer while the weather is good. But enough of all that for now. More to follow on this soon...

I hope all the mothers out there had a wonderful Mother's Day and I hope everyones run was great. Until then - happy running to all!