We Reached the beach!

Another great year at Reach the Beach relay. The Gogo girls were complied of new members and alumni, me being my third year attending.
The new course started at Cannon Mountain and cruised up the Kanc for the first 7 legs. By up I mean - relentless hills, specifically the 3rd leg= 7.7 miles ALL up hill.
The first day was awesome running weather. Until about 1:30 AM Sat. it started misting. Right at the beginning of my second leg (1:30-2am-ish) it was pouring for 5 minutes then it went back to misting and continued to mist through out the night. The down pour happened on ME later. My last leg of the race 6.8 miles and for the first 4.5 it was pouring on me. I was wringing my shirt out and my tutu was soaked. But I managed to just not worry about it.... after all it was my last leg. Then 3 more people to run and we would be FINISHED. Everyone managed to run fast- these women were amazing.... mostly 6.5 -8 minute milers!!
We came in second place in womens category and our overall pace was 8:02 Per mile. (if it wasnt for me Im pretty sure we would be under 8's....im a bit slower than the rest....)
Pretty awesome pace for a 207 mile race. We get new fuel belts!!
We were beat out of first place by The Maine Road hags- only 9 women on their team and their pace was 7:30!!!!! They were awesome runners!

Another long run.......

Another long run with M and we managed to crank out 18 miles. From Mystic to Stonington Borough and then back down Rt 1 and over the drawbridge and down River Road. A nice loop, even though rt 1 was straight and boring. She pulled away from be quite a bit up some hills(she was ahead of me the whole time actually), she powers up them like its nothing- amazing! Once we hit the borough we were at just over 9 miles, and it was breezy by the water, it was going to be another 4 miles or so until we got to Mystic and could refill our water and use the restroom. I think the thought of using a restroom was the only thing that kept me going until we got into downtown... I was getting tiered! Once we got to the fountain we refilled and off we went for the last 3-4 mile stretch down river road. I had to walk a while and Melissa went ahead of me. It was getting hot and I was getting tiered. I finally made it to the end of river road and we walked up one of the last hills and M started running again and i did a few minutes later. She hit over 18 mark and I was able to run the last 3 tenths of a mile to just hit the 18 mark. We walked the last .40 mile up the hills back to Ms house. Sometimes those last 2 miles seem like an eternity.....it did for me this day.

Only a few more long runs then the marathon.......now I just want to get it over with.

Next week is Reach the Beach and we have a full team!! will update when get back.

Injuries, recoveries, and no more bug.

Its been a while, basically because A) my piriformis muscle started acting up last week and I skipped my long run and spent the week with a heating pad under my ass.
B) I started my new job!!! exciting and its going well. We have summer hours - 4 (9) hour days and a 4 hour work day on friday! so its like a 2.5 day weekend. AWESOME. And yesterday I biked over the Groton bridge to work for the 1st time. It was neat being that high on the bridge. Turned out to be about 11 miles round trip.
C) this week i did some awesome running because I'm feeling better and today I did 18.53 miles! the last .53 I walked ... but I was so relieved that I felt good and that I was able to keep going. My hill drills that I did this week went so awesome, its getting easier every time.
So I had hoped that I would do New Haven 20k on monday but its saturday and I did my long run without my injury flaring up, and I really don't want to push it.
Its been a busy week but I prefer it that way sometimes. Another added note- we sold our 73 super beetle last week. So sad, bye bye blue bug. =(