I'll see Your Fartlek and raise you one Tempo Run

I have to talk about today's runs. But first, a word on my hair...indeed, I had all my hairs cut, which in effect, lowered my ears. I hope all of you are happy now.

Good Morning, Glory

This morning's run did not go so well. Joanie Garmin absolutely refused to find a satellite, so I just decided to try and maintain what felt like a moderate pace and then estimate the distance. I did fairly well considering...but, I was annoyed the entire time. It was a fairly irritating run. Joanie thus set the mood for the rest of the day. I was not happy. And to top it off...I was in gnat hell. Today's gnat count was:

Number of gnats inhaled and/or swallowed: 1 but he was HUGE

Number of gnats in hair/ears/bra/clothes: 15 at least

I'm not diggin' the bugs. In fact, I can't wait until it's brutally cold again. I really am excited about the prospects of training in another nasty winter. Because, CES is training for the Bermuda Marathon/Half-marathon in January. Ummmm...I'm there? How do you say no to Bermuda in January?!?!?! Well, we'll see if I can afford it. I'll for sure being doing the Winter Warriors training program again (my third time), so if I can come up the money for the trip, I'll do it. It'd be nice to go do a destination race with my friends.

Wednesday Nights are for Speed
I was super excited to get back to my Wednesday night group runs. We mostly do speed work and special exercises on Wednesday nights. Tonight's scheduled run was a Fartlek! Very exciting, very Swedish. When we gathered for announcements, we were told that it would be a "negotiated" fartlek.

Huh? Pardon? Never heard of it...have you? Basically, we'd be in groups and difference people would decided when and for how long we'd speed up and slow down. I was not too keen on that idea, because I just don't think I'd be able to work as hard. I'd much prefer to have someone blowing a whistle to signal when we speed up and slow down. However, it worked out pretty well. Definitely got a good work out in with some faster ladies. We averaged about a 9:10 or 9:05 during our speed-ups, which is speedy for me!

However...the run was not without its detractors. Some older dude joined our group and kept asking questions about how long the intervals were, what we were supposed to do, etc. It was sooooooo annoying. And once he was gone, some other chick just kept talking! No matter how fast or how slow we were going, she was talking. I hope she doesn't join our pace group on Saturday. I don't think I could take 16 miles of her or that dude. Clearly, they need to go talk to the coaches.

Well, I'm off to ruin yet another night's sleep by watching the Olympics. Night!