I Love My Husband!!!

...even though he takes semi-skanky pictures of me for my blog and thinks they are ok to publish.

I'll explain in a bit.

Sunday long run today was again a 14-miler. My coach increases my mileage VERY conservatively. I've done 37 miles each week for the past two weeks. Next week will be 38 miles + a 15-miler for my long run.

I'm feeling a little bummed. I used to really look forward to my long runs. At this point, they are simply a chore. When I left the house this morning at 4:40 IN THE FREAKIN' MORNING, it was already 85 degrees. It was also windy. Wind gusts were up to 15 mph. I started out running directly into the wind thinking this would serve me well on the way back (turns out it really didn't). I kept stalking my Garmin, which was reading in the 9:20s. Ugh!

Would love to say that the run really took off after a few miles but not so much.

I had to poop around mile 11. Naturally, the bathrooms in the park were LOCKED. Come on! Throw me a bone already!!

At any rate, I made it. Finished up without pooping my pants and at a 9:17 overall pace. Meh.

When I got home, my husband hopped to it. Not only did he go get me 40 pounds of ice for my ice bath, he brought me some Starbucks too! (Note: Even the water here comes out of the tap WARM during the summer, so it takes 40 pounds of ice to get a decent, actually therapeutic ice bath. All 40 pounds are melted by the end of the 10 minute torture session.)

Awkward ice bath photo. I couldn't figure out what to do with my R arm, apparently.

I actually had to crop the photo because my husband took a really crotchtastic photo of me in the tub. What's the equivalent to TMI in photo talk? Yeah, it was something like that. TMV maybe?

The only thing even remotely cute about that photo is my headband. A couple of weeks ago I won a blog giveaway from Shut Up and Run. It was for $50 worth of headbands from Active Headbands. I can't say enough great things about my experience with these headbands thus far. They don't move AT ALL during my runs. I've used several types of headbands before and they have ALL slipped out of place. Not these though. I'm a huge fan and highly recommend that you check out their website and order a couple for yourself.

How are your long runs going in this heat?

Do you do ice baths??