I have been slacking on putting up the last few weeks of my training. After my run rest, where I switched my long runs from Saturdays to Wednesdays, I have done an 18 mile run and a 20 mile run. The 18 miler was pretty bad - I walked ALOT, it took me way longer than I wanted and I felt awful afterwards. I mean, it felt like I was coming down with the flu, I had a headache and my body was achey, but I spent the rest of the day that day at my moms in the pool before heading in to work - which seemed to cure most of my ailments. :) The following week I ran a 20 miler and felt 100x better... didn't have to walk at all and better managed my fluid intake - I felt so good that I wished the race was happening right then and I could just run 6 more miles and be done with it! Thankfully this week's 22 miler was just as nice!

Here's what my work out weeks been looking like:

Saturday 9/21 - P90x legs and back
Sunday - 3 mile run with Piper
Monday - ACL Class (My final class, so I'm going to need another form of exercise on Mon/Wed)
Tuesday - Rest and body prep for the long run. This includes some stretching, rolling out the tight muscle with "The Stick", and some carb loading. My routine carb load dinner is 2 slices of cheese pizza from Papa Johns and 2-3 bread sticks! I'm hoping I can find a Papa Johns pretty easily in DC the night before the race. ; )

Source - No afilliation

Wednesday - 22 Mile Run! I ran a 10 mile loop, stopped at the house to quickly use the bathroom and grab some Gu Chomps, ran another 10 mile loop, then stopped to get little miss Piper for the last 2 miles. That probably wasn't the best idea seeing as she had way more energy at that point than I did, haha, but she made sure I ran those last 2 miles with all I had left. Afterwards I was sore and achey, but just the legs, so I was super happy. Unfortunately I had mad blisters on my toes, they are still hurting today, but other than that I felt great!

Source

Friday - Rested - oops. Definitely should've done an arm workout or something! I'm a slacker...

"And a house on a piece of land, we'll plant some roots and some apple trees. Hey pretty girl lets build some dreams..."

Man, I'm loving this song right now by Kip Moore! Especially this line because I feel like it perfectly describes the season of life Mark and I are in - the season of building dreams and planting roots. And actually, it described us literally last week in terms of planting roots, not the apple tree kind of roots but some tree roots none the less!

In my last post I talked about how Mark and I went shopping for trees for our backyard and last weekend we went and brought home 9 pretty trees to line our back fence. We spent what was probably the last warm Saturday of the season cleaning up the backyard and planting trees with the help of my dad and brother.

This is the fence that runs along our back yard. Our yard is more long than deep so we had a good expanse to fill in to help give us some privacy. The trees in the picture below are our baby "Dahoons"... they got dropped off first that morning...

If I ever start to complain, can somebody please just slap me? Okay, maybe slapping is a bit violent, maybe you could just gently remind me of days like yesterday??? I'd sure appreciate it, because I really have no right to grumble...

This fall I only have to work until noon on Fridays, (most Fridays I end up getting off at 11 really...) and Mark has every other Friday off. That means every other Friday we get to spend the afternoon together. Yesterday we soaked up every minute of our afternoon together by doing a lot of planning and dream building for our house.




After I got off work we headed out to a nearby nursery to check out some trees for our back yard. We can pretty much see right into our neighbors backyard from our deck (and they can see us) so we're looking to get some privacy hedges/trees to put in along the fence this fall. Not that we have anything against them, its just... umm.... awkward sometimes.



After we left the nursery we stopped at one of our favorite local spots,  Bergey's Bread Basket, to get some delicious, home-made, soft serve ice cream. (That was a lot of comma's!)

Since we've returned from our Europe adventure I've been trying to decide what to do with all of our little mementos from the trip. You know like the airport boarding passes, the tour tickets, the left over coins... all those things you normally put in a scrap book? I used to love to scrapbook, but it's a little too time consuming and creatively challenging for me these days, so when I found this pin on Pinterest, I thought it as perfect!

Here's how I completed the project and made it my own. :)






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I took a rest from my long runs this weekend for a couple of reasons. One, I have to switch my long run days from Friday mornings to Wednesday mornings because of a change in my work schedule and Two, I knew my legs needed a rest! For the past 4 weeks I've increased my mileage by 2 miles a week, 10,12,14,16.... plus I've been adding more strength training for my legs and I could just tell they were getting fatigued. I was originally planning to do a 10 miler on Saturday and then 16 miles on Wednesday but when I woke up Saturday morning my legs felt heavy and tired before I even got out of bed! I knew it wouldn't be a good run and it was about time for a step back week anyways, so I'm just saving up some energy for a good long run on Wednesday : )

Monday - Labor Day - We went canoeing on the James river with family for Labor Day. We were out there for 4 hours, so I'm counting that as my workout today.

Tuesday - P90x Legs + Ab Ripper X

Wednesday - ACL Class

Thursday - 3 mile run with the Pipes.

Friday - P90x Chest and Shoulders + 300 Abs (an Ab workout from pinterest)



Saturday - 1 Mile quick run with the Pipe's in my new shoes!!! So excited that Sports Authority had all of their Asics on sale! My regular $115 shoes were only $69.98!

(I'm not affiliated with Sports Authority in anyway.)

Sunday - Rest, but I did take the pup for a walk this afternoon, it feels good just to get outside and move, even if it's a leisurely walk.

The first part of this next week will be pretty light as I rest and body prep for Wednesday's run. Still debating on whether it will be a 16 mile or 18 miler! But I'm glad I will have my new shoes to take with me :)

Mark and I were gone for the weekend visiting family for the last summer holiday so I'm a little behind putting up my workout schedule from last week. I have to say I'm in like with putting my workout schedules up on the blog here, It's keeping me accountable because it makes me think, Hey! I have to be able to say I did something! So here's what last week look liked on the exercise side of things.

Monday: ACL Class

Tuesday: 3 mile run

Wednesday: ACL class

Thursday: Rest (body prep for Friday's run - included lots of water and some carbs. My favorite pre-run dinner? 2 slices of cheese pizza and a couple of plain breadsticks.)

Friday: 16 mile run! And it was SO much better than last week's 14 miler. I know I said I was going to back it down this week and try 16 miles next week, but I knew my legs were feeling better than last week since I took Thursday off to rest and I didn't want to waste a good day on a shorter run! I did take my ipod with me which helped my motivation tremendously. And I decided to do 10 miles, make a pit stop at the house to grab a quick drink and some energy chews, and then left for the last 6. It made a huge difference I think! My 10 mile time: 1:40. 13.1 mile time: 2:14:40 (1/2 marathon split time!). 16 mile time: 2:49:37

My mantra during my run on Friday!

Saturday + Sunday: Vacation! I took my running gear with me, and probably should've gone for a run, but I was enjoying family and sleep just a little too much. (Priorities right? :))