September 26, 2014

Renaissance Festival and evening long run

I feel so good right now! It's been a long (but nice) day.

This morning, we got a phone call at 5:30 saying that the kids' school was canceled due to fog. Normally, they just have a two-hour delay when there is dense fog like there was this morning, but they were already scheduled for a half-day of school, so it made more sense to just cancel school for the day. The kids and been begging me yesterday if they could skip school today, because it was only a half day, so when they got up this morning, I told them they could skip (haha! I left out the part that it was canceled).

I had a long run scheduled today (well, actually, my schedule said a 5K race for this week, but I didn't plan to do that, so I just figured I'd repeat last week's long run of 8 miles). When school was canceled, I decided to just do my long run Sunday morning instead, so I could spend time with the kids today.

We wanted to do something fun with them, because Jerry was off work today, so we were browsing the internet for ideas. We finally decided to go to the Renaissance Festival in Holly, Michigan. I'd been there once before, but it was when I was in college (2000-ish), so I couldn't remember much. We were going to buy the tickets online, and I was shocked at how expensive they were--$22 for adults, and $12 for kids. I started looking for discount codes, and couldn't find any, so we just decided to hold off and get the tickets at the door.

We drove up there (about an hour and a half away) and when we got in line for tickets, a man asked me if we needed to buy tickets. I said yes, and he handed me three tickets and said he had extra. How awesome is that?! So we just had to buy one more ticket, and all four of us got in for the cost of a $12 ticket. I was so glad we hadn't bought the tickets online. The generosity of strangers is awesome.

We walked around for a bit, and watched a few shows. I really liked the magician and the acrobats.

Magician cutting a banana with a bull whip


I can't even!

Watching the jousting show

I have a photo of me in this cutout from 2000, and I wish I could find it!

Jerry looks like he was meant for this cutout

The boys all wanted a turkey leg for lunch. We should have gotten just one and let them each try it to make sure they liked it, because Jerry and Eli didn't even end up liking it! Eli may have liked it more if he wasn't missing so many teeth--poor kid, he has a hard time eating anything that isn't cut into small bites because he lost so many baby teeth at once. ;)


We stayed about three hours, and then headed home. I was thinking about how I'd skipped my run, and thought maybe I should just do it tonight, and get it over with. I didn't want to have to think about it all weekend. So at around 4:30, I got dressed to head out for 8 miles. I very rarely run in the afternoon/evening, especially a long run!

I wasn't sure how I'd feel, considering the time of day, the heat, and the fact that I was walking around at the festival for a few hours. So I decided to just run however it felt comfortable for the first mile, and let that determine what I'd aim for during the rest of the run. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good, and did the first mile in 9:46. So I decided to aim for sub-10:00 splits. I planned a 5-mile loop and then a 3-mile loop, so that I could get water after mile 5 if needed.

Toward the third mile, I wasn't feeling so hot, and decided that if I could hit all sub-10's for the 5-mile loop, I could stop after that fifth mile. Since I was technically only scheduled for a 5K, I figured it'd be fine to cut the run short at 5 miles. I made it a mission to hit sub-10's for the fourth and fifth mile. When I reached my house, Jerry had my water outside for me, so I gulped some down. I was trying to decide if I should aim for 3 more. I didn't feel terrible, so I knew I could do it. I asked Jerry if he'd finish it out with me, and he agreed. I needed a little something to get me through that last 3 miles, so a running partner was perfect.

I told him I was aiming for sub-10's, but after a half mile, I said forget it--let's just slow down and run easy. My pace slowed to about 10:10, and with a quarter mile to go, I was feeling little better, and decided to just go for sub-10's all around. The last three miles was VERY tough, especially in the sun, but I managed to do it! I can't even describe how good I felt when I was done.


I couldn't believe it when I saw my recovery time--my Garmin determines how long I need to recover from a run based on how hard it was. Normally, it will tell me anywhere from 24-36 hours, occasionally up to 60 hours if it's really tough. Today? It wasn't even measured in hours, but in DAYS. Bahaha! At first glance, I thought it said 35 hours, but upon closer inspection...


Turns out I had burned 103 calories per mile--that's a lot for me! Now I can rest over the weekend, which sounds very nice :) My uncle is in town from Florida, so we have plans to have dinner and watch the Tigers game with him tomorrow night.

1 comment:

  1. This is really a great example of just gettin' it done! Good for you!

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