Monster-Free Sunday

There were plenty of reasons to think our 8.5-mile run wasn’t going to go well today.

• I ate artichoke-and-goat-cheese pizza at the Drafthouse last night, along with two glasses of sparkling wine and chocolate chip cookies. (Yes, I did… I celebrated reaching goal weight by eating junk. Meh. Me=Not Perfect. Go figure.)
• We got a late start. I HATE when we get a late start.
• I made us even later because I forgot my watch and had to go all the way back home to get it. I just couldn’t bear the thought of not tracking my intervals over the course of 8.5 miles.
• I’m still not 100% recovered, and my energy has been whack.

But against the odds, our run kinda ruled. I think I have CrossFit Jules to thank for banishing the monsters from my doorstep. The weather was perfect: a little breezy, sparklingly sunny, and just cool enough that my favorite Under Armour turtleneck was the right level of covered up.

My legs felt much better than my last run, and I was able to do 3:00 on/:30 off intervals for most of the trail — although at the end, I cut back to 2:30 and 2:00 ’cause I was getting raggedy. In between the first and second halves of our run, I did 20 pushups and 10 wall dips; at the end, I played around on the parallel bars a little and tried to do a kipping pullup… with zero success. But that’s the first time I’ve tried it without a box; next time will be better, for sure.

Free advice, right here: If you don’t have the following two songs on your running playlist, you need to add them immediately.

I’m not kidding.

“Are You Gonna Be My Girl” – Jet

All These Things That I Have Done – The Killers

I rounded a corner on the trail just as The Killers’ song was starting. It was one of those perfect moments: warm sunlight filtering through the tree limbs to make shadows on the trail in front of me, a light breeze lifting my hair from my face, my legs turning over for an effortless few seconds… makes a person glad to be alive.