Christmas Lights & Flying

It has been a busy couple of days!

Monday night was the annual Cabot Country Cruisers Holiday Light Run. I was able to talk Arland into going, but I had to use Kylie as bait. It was chilly but not too cold, but I knew I would be doing a lot of walking so I dressed warmer than I normally would for a run. I wish I would have gotten some pictures of Kylie in all of her "runner girl" gear. She was just too cute!!
Kylie did really well at the start of the run, we got started a few seconds behind and she was trying to catch up with the main group. She was pretty speedy but I knew it wouldn't last long... although I have to say she was able to run a lot longer than I thought she would. Arland's leg is injured so he was walking and Vicki also walked with us. Vicki knew that Arland needed some company and she stayed with him the whole time. I think as much as Arland misses running he misses the companionship of the Cruiser's even more. So once Kylie ran out of steam it was the four of us.
After Kylie was completely worn out and couldn't walk anymore I put her on my back and then Arland carried her on his shoulder's. Poor thing she was too cute, she kept saying "I don't want to run, I just want to party"!!!
Towards the end the group came running towards us and Kylie was soo excited!! They all looked great and they were singing Christmas songs. At the time I was really wishing I was running with them, but I really enjoyed being with Arland, Vicki and Kylie. I also know that Kylie isn't always going to want to hang out with us so I am happy for every moment I have with her now!
After the run we all gathered at Vicki's house for snacks... it was nice to get to see everyone and spend some non running time together. It was a small group this year and Kylie and Sarah's little boy Austin were the only kids, but they made the most of it. I almost forgot at the end of the run Kylie and Austin sprinted the last little bit and were declared the winners :) Austin by the way is quite the runner, he is 3 years old and he ran the entire time which I think was about 2.5 miles. All the way home Kylie kept asking me "now how many miles did I run" she couldn't wait to tell everyone how far she had run.

Last night was our Tuesday Night Flyer's clinic. For the advanced group the workout was 2 mile warm up, strides and then a 20 minute tempo run at your lactate threshold pace. Intermediate was the same except for 15 minute LT pace. I chose to do the advanced workout. I also was able to talk Baily and Kelly into 20 minutes as well.
Something about the cold air I always have to use the restroom pretty much as soon as we start running. I asked Andrea if I could use her house while we were still at the school and of course she said yes. I ran to her house with Bailey and Cheryl. I had to do a lot "talking into" with Baily last night... LOL When I said I needed to use the bathroom she said she did too but she would just wait, I said that's silly it's right there and you will have a better run if you do. So Bailey, Cheryl and I took advantage of Andrea and Scott's hospitality. Good thing too because I know I wouldn't have had as good a run if I hadn't.
We still had a little over a mile left of our warm up after the break so we just made a big loop around Andrea's neighborhood.
Cheryl and Brenda showed me a few new tricks with my Garmin last night... I really should read the instruction manual!! LOL
I set it so the backlight would stay on for the whole workout... it sure made it easier to be able to keep up with our average pace. And I used a different display window than I normally do.
Kelly ran the LT pace with me, although her's is supposed to be a little slower than mine she has been doing the LT workout's with me for the most part and she has been doing a great job with them too!!!!
As we started running we were chatting a little bit, but as I got us up to our desired avg pace Kelly said I don't think I'm going to be doing much talking during this... I told her same here but it's just nice to have someone running with you regardless if you talk or not.
Because I had my Garmin on a different display window it would start over at each mile, so we didn't know the exact running time. Every time we ran by someone we would yell out how long have we been running. (we all started the workout at the same time) Finally Dennis gave me his watch and said when it get's to 6 minutes you are done. Kelly bless her heart kept asking me how much longer but I could barely see the watch so it was a challenge, I don't know why I didnt' just give the watch to her since she has better eyes than I do!! We ended up with 20:51 instead of 20 minutes but that's ok, we did it and we finished strong.
Instead of doing strides after the workout Dennis told us to incorporate them into our run back to the school. We were all just taking it easy when Bailey suddenley just took off... Brenda said oh yeah we are supposed to be doing strides. I had secretely hoped they would forget!! But no we were good girls and we would stride from mailbox to mailbox and the last one was acutally up hill.
Total mileage was 5.25
LT pace workout
2.15 miles
9:42 avg pace
avg HR for those 2.15 miles
157 max was 164
Does that mean I should have pushed harder???
I did feel like I could have kept running our LT pace for longer than 20 minutes.
Next week will be Hill Repeats... after two weeks of doing the advanced workouts I wonder if Dennis will let me go back to the intermediate!!
Oh almost forgot Tracy and Tamara did their mile time trials and they both did really well!!!