Moving right along....

I've been slacking on the posts lately--here's the dish from the last couple weeks.

I've started running in the mornings. I made the switch in my schedule last week. It's surprised me how much I'm enjoying the change! It's a nice, positive start to my day. I get it out of the way first thing, and it keeps my evenings free which is great--especially this time of year with the holidays quickly approaching! It also is forcing me to go to bed earlier and focus more on getting enough sleep!

Last Saturday morning I did another 6 mile run along Alki. It was my first outdoor run in awhile. It was cold, but a beautiful and clear, sunny day. I had an amazing view of the snow-capped Olympics and downtown Seattle.

This week has been full of 4 and 5 mile runs. I have my 2nd 7 mile run on Saturday. I'm hoping I'll have similiar weather to last Saturday's run--I'm thinking I'll try a new outdoor route this weekend. There's a great website (I'll post a link to it) called MapMyRun.com where you can choose any starting point in the world, and map out where you want to go. It's a great tool. It shows mileage, elevation changes, etc. etc.

The runs this week have been good. I did notice a little bit of pain in my right foot Tuesday morning for the first mile, but it went away and hasn't bothered me since, so I'm not concerned. So far, I haven't suffered really any muscle soreness at all--I'm anticipating that might happen when I get into some serious distances. I'm finding that my body is feeling more used to 4 or 5 miles now as a standard run, rather than the 3 or 4 I was mostly doing before. It's a good feeling, and I have only had one run so far that I've felt really pooped afterwards. Most of the time I feel like I could keep going.

I was having some issues with getting sideaches over the last few weeks. This week it hasn't bothered me at all. I've been giving myself a little longer warm-up time which seems to be doing the trick.

My first 8 mile run will be a week from this Saturday, on the 22nd. Cory and I will be in Wenatchee for Christmas, so I'm already thinking about planning that into my time there. Christmas week, luckily, is a taper week...the 8 miles will be the hardest run all week....mostly 3 milers the rest of the time there. Luckily both my in-laws and my Dad have treadmills so it will be easy to get the mileage in. Though I do like Gold's Gym in Wenatch, which I'll probably hit up for the 8-miler. If there's no snow (hopefully there will be lots of it though), I'll probably venture outdoors.

I got lazy and stopped logging my diet for the last couple of weeks, but now that the mileage is starting to get up there, I think it's time to get back to it. I have experimented some the last couple weeks. I've been eating a little less fresh fruits and veggies to see if that helps with "the problem", and as suspected, it has. Though I hate the idea of cutting those things out. I'm going try adding more of them back in and see if I can pinpoint if there are certain things that are better or worse.

I feel like I repeat myself a lot on these posts, so if anyone has any questions or something they'd like me to address, let me know!

Rest day tomorrow.