Our treadmill is tucked into the tiny little room in our house that we call “the office.” The treadmill takes up 90% of the real estate in this room, leaving just enough room for a set of shelves, my desk, and built in bookshelves on one wall. The treadmill faces the windows in this tiny room. When I drag myself out of bed at 5am, I look forward to several things. Earning my breakfast with sweat, binge watching Parks and Rec, and watching the sunrise. As luck would have it, the “office” windows face east.

This morning I got an extra treat because as I was running, I kept noticing these odd flashes. At first I thought maybe something electric on the back of the house was sparking. It was unnerving because the sun was still coming up. Once I hopped off the treadmill and went into our bedroom, I noticed the south end of the house was enveloped in dark clouds. I was seeing lightning, as well as watching the sun come up in a nearly cloudless eastern part of the sky. Oh Kansas…you and your wacky weather entertain me.

I did the tempo run key run #2 this morning. It felt easier than last week’s tempo. 2 miles easy. I did one at 5.5 (10:54 pace) and one at 6.0 (10:00 pace). Then I did 3 miles at my short tempo pace of 9:05 (6.6 on the TM). Then I did a cool down with the first 400 @ 5.0 (12:00 pace) and the last of the mile back up to a 6.0. I tried to give myself an out during the tempo and allow myself to grab a towel, but then I made it to the halfway point and told my body to just push through to the end. The mental part of running is amazing. You can accomplish so much if you talk yourself into it.

I really had to talk myself into putting my shoes on this morning. My toes HURT. Well, one toe hurts.

This one. Notice it has a funky little callous on the end. I don’t know what that’s about. It’s not a blister…trust me…I tried popping it. It just hurts. Stupid toe. The nail has fallen off before. We’ll see if it does it again soon. It sure would feel better if it does!

I forgot to do a summary of last week’s workouts. Let’s just say I got them all done. My long run was done Sunday morning at 6am with a new running friend, Crystal. We forgot to take a selfie. Fail. Crystal is quite a bit faster than me, but she said she could handle my slow 10:54 pace for 11 miles. I suck at reeling myself in, especially when the 4 mile loop we were running also happened to be the bike course of the triathlon Mr. Neon was doing that morning. That was fun! We ran the course opposite the bikes, so we had plenty of opportunities to yell at our triathlon friends. We did the 11 miles at 10:18. OOPS! This pace was completely doable for me…chatty even. But I sure felt it the next couple of times. Quads were sore. I guess that goes to show that the science behind Run Less, Run Faster is sound. I have had minimal soreness this entire training plan…very different from previous cycles. The moral of the story…stick to the plan!

The other moral to the story is a runner’s bag of gear should also contain bug spray. We started our run Sunday at 6am, and we both neglected to bring bug spray. The mosquitoes are extra bad this time of year. So not only did I have sore quads for 48 hours, but I also had close to 70 itchy mosquito bites. But don’t worry, Grandma, I didn’t get lyme disease. Yeah…my grandma warned me about that. Ticks, Grandma, ticks give you lyme disease.

I’m off to hydrate with my big ole bottle of smart water and then hit up some Vega One. I’ve got a post planned soon about all the supplements I take. I used to be anti-supplement and oh how the times have changed!