OK. Confession. I went for a run last night after I said I was giving myself another week before I would get back to it. Yesterday marked 10 days since running the New Jersey Marathon. It was a GORGEOUS Spring evening.

pink flowering trees just make me happy

pink flowering trees just make me happy

i had just walked with Duncan around the neighborhood for a half hour.

walkin'

There are big barking dogs in the yards of the houses on this street so he always makes me walk in the street for this block. He’s prefers to be far away from those loud dogs.

It was also the first day nothing hurt. My hip felt good, my ankle felt good, my knee felt good. So I made a last minute decision to just go run a little bit. I’m so happy with my decision. It was the free-est 2 miles ever:

running like a kid at recess!

running like a kid at recess!

• No Garmin

no watch tan yet

no watch tan yet

• No Hat

Let the curls run free!

Let the curls run free!

• No KT Tape
• No music
• No time goals

I came home, stretched, foam rolled and then had the last glass of wine from the bottle I started on Monday. 🙂

This was my Monday night, and my Tuesday night

This was my Monday night, and my Tuesday night and my Wednesday night

I woke up this morning feeling good. I’m still going to lay low in the running department though. Maybe wait until the weekend to run again. I’ll see how I feel. But for now, those 2 miles put me in a good mood and i can carry along today.

Do you do most of your running (or any exercise) by a watch?

Do you like wine? If so, red or white?

Do you have trees in full bloom where you are?

Howdy readers!

So this morning in my news feed I came across this photo…

runfree

along with this quote from this facebook page…quote

Well, I thought about making today’s long run a “run free” run. First I said no watch, then I decided how about tape over the face of the watch. I’m not ready to not track my run with my Garmin but I did think about how nice it would be to not get caught up in keeping a certain pace and just run based on effort. Of course after I left the house I realized I forgot the tape. So I TRIED to not look at my watch. And for the first mile I didn’t. I knew I was probably running a slow 11:35 pace. When I looked at my watch it said 11:37! How crazy is that?! Anyway, I kept cheating and realized that I might be a failure when it comes to the whole “run free” thing. Meanwhile EVERY time I looked at my watch it was the pace I FELT I was running. So really, I DO know my pace by effort and don’t really need the watch.

splits

9 miles at just under a 12 minute mile pace. Woah! That’s SNAIL pace for me (I’m usually between 10-11 min per mile pace). I started my run at 2:30pm with hot sun beating down. It was 82 degrees. But the humidity was at 50% and my unhealthy fixation with the hourly weather showed that the humidity was going up a whole lot while the temps were only dropping a degree or two in the next few hours, so I figured i’d go with the lowest percent humidity for the day to start my run. In hindsight, I should have waited until 7pm to start. Oh well. But the 9 miles are done. And I think I want to try a “no-peek-at-my-garmin” run again.

After I came home and showered I decided this doodle deserved a little fun time….so we went to the beach.

beachbum

Question: Have you ever gone for a run without a gadget to tell you your current pace? Do you run with music or without?