Sexy 7 Dinner & My Long Run

Last night, Todd & I went to dinner with the Sexy 7 and their significant others...or rather, the dinner was with 3/7ths since 3 of them don't live in Columbus anymore and one of them couldn't make it at the last minute. So it ended up being just Todd & I, Lynn & her hubby, Nathan, and Megs & her boyfriend, Brian. Since I tend to be the planner in the group, I am usually the one who is sending out the emails to try to get something together. The good thing with this is that it means I get to pick what we do or where we go out to eat. There's an Italian restaurant that I'd been wanting to try so I figured this was the perfect chance. We went to Carsonie's on Lane Avenue and the food was great. We had a really good veggie stromboli followed up by chocolate cake (I couldn't resist!) and an elephant ear that everyone shared. I'm really glad that we're all able to go out to dinner and everyone has a good time. It makes life a lot easier when all the significant others can hang out and get along. I love my friends and it seems like we're doing a better job of getting together more often because for awhile, we would go months without seeing each other even though we all lived within 15-20 minutes of each other. I'm pretty excited to hang out with them again next Friday for Todd's Mustache Party.

Clockwise starting on the left: Lynn, Brian & Megs, me & Todd, Nathan

I woke up bright & early this morning to get in my 16 mi long run in before my boot camp work meeting at 11:00am. This is the one bad thing about training for marathons--I never get to sleep in! I work out/run before work every day, which means I'm up at 4:45am, and I teach a core class & spinning class on Sunday mornings so Saturday is my one day to sleep in...but not for another few months now I guess. Anyways, I ended up running on the treadmill at my apartment complex gym. If I'm going to do anything more than an hour on the treadmill, I'd rather do it at my apartment where I know I have the potential of being the only person in there instead of at the big commercial gym I teach at. Plus, I can turn the TV to whatever I want at my apartment and crank up the volume.

My goal for this long run was to make it a "fast finish long run," meaning I start at an easy run pace, increase slightly in the middle of the run, and then try for goal marathon pace (GMP) for the last few miles. I ran my first 8 mi between 8:20-8:30, the next 5 mi around GMP between 8:00-8:10, and picked it up the last 3 mi between 7:45-7:55 for an overall time of 2:10:24 and average pace of 8:09. Overall, I was pleased except for the few miles about halfway through that I started to cramp up after I drank some water but luckily it went away. The worst part about running so long on the treadmill is that the treadmill will only stay on for 1 hour so when I ran today I had to restart it TWICE which can make it hard to get going again. Now I can relax and enjoy the rest of my weekend!