Bad Blogger

 MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I feel like I have been such an absentee blogger recently. I used to navigate through my days thinking about what I could post about and so far this school year has kept me so busy I just have not had the time for much writing--aside from my papers and assignments for class. It makes me sad that blogging has taken a back seat, but despite my lack of posting, lots has been going on. I don't think that I have mentioned on here, but I am training for a half marathon with my roommate. The race is in April and I have never run anything longer than a 10K race before, but we have been busily gearing up. We do a long run every Sunday (followed by something warm and yummy from Starbucks) and I try to get in as many workouts as I can during the week. We actually have a whole group that we train with, which is fun because it makes training a little more social than boring. It has been tough to keep a workout schedule with having class two days (or sometimes 4 days a week), but I do my best.

Once I happily reunited with my cute husband last week, we decided to go for a run together since I was missing my long run with the group. Unfortunately, we just don't make good running buddies. My group consists of awesome people who are completely fine with running slowly--we call ourselves turtles and share the goal of just wanting to finish the race rather than focusing on keeping a particular pace or achieving a certain time. We plug away at our miles slow and steady. When I ran with hubs, he kept on encouraging me to run faster and push harder, which is great, but not what I am used to with my running group. Since I am away from the pack this week while spending my break in Arizona, I decided to kick my training up a notch. Despite the beautiful, warm weather, I have been doing my runs on the treadmill which helps me with my pacing. Usually I run at 6.0 on the treadmill which is a ten minute mile because that is a very comfortable pace.

Today, I rocked it out and definitely kicked it up a notch. I ran 7 miles in 60 minutes. My 5K time was 27:10, my 10K time was 52:58 and the overall time was just a hair over an hour. The whole time I was at 6.5 mph or faster. Since we are staying in Sun City which has a minimum age requirement and is the home to lots of elderly people, the treadmills at the gym actually max out at 8.0 mph which is a bit less than an 8 minute mile and I actually felt like I could run faster than that at certain points during the run. I am glad that I found the motivation to get in such a good run and now I know that I need to push myself more!

After our trip to the gym, Mr. Sneaker and I enjoyed a nice dinner with his parents and his grandma and we are now relaxing and watching Wall Street. We skyped with my brother, his wife, and our nieces earlier today and overall it was a great Christmas. Hubs gave me an adidas miCoach and some new running gear which helped with the motivation to get moving a little faster.

 He also got me Uggs (yay!), but my favorite gift of all is spending time with him! 

I am going to be so sad when we leave AZ next week because we will be apart for another 3 months until spring break and it will be back to the grind. I am taking 4 courses again during Winter term and I need to get my act in gear and start writing my core paper which is the first major paper/presentation of the program. Somehow I managed to get all A's last term which is awesome but given how many times I got sick during the first few months of school, I know that busting my butt has really been taking its toll and stressing me out. It has been SO nice to just relax this past week. I finally finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest which I had to restart since it had been so long since I had picked it up and I also read The Hunger Games which I LOVED. We are actually reading it for book club this term, but I decided to read it in advance during break so that it would not be an additional part of my weekly work once my classes start. It is ridiculous how many books I brought with me, but having spare time to just read for pleasure is SO great that I wanted to take full advantage. And, being the total dork that I am, I brought one of my textbooks for next term so I can take a sneak peak and get ready for Winter Term.

Hopefully I will be better about posting because I miss it! Keep checking in!