I ran my first 10k!

And it was so much fun! Hard... but fun!

This past Saturday was the Tour des Fleurs race in Dallas. It was free through my Luke's training group, so I signed up as early as I could. I have never ran a race before in my life, so I wasn't sure what all to expect. I asked Grant to go with me for support and he did, even though we left the house at around 6:30am. What a great husband. :)

Anyway, there was a lot more hills than I expected, but I ran them all. I only took (2) 30 second walk breaks at the top of 2 hills to catch my breath, but that was it. Other than that, I RAN! I was so proud of myself when I came around the corner and saw the finish line. I also wore my new Garmin watch so I could keep up with my pace/distance. I love that thing!

I finished the 6.2 miles in 1:05, which is about a 10:48/mile. I really wanted to finish in around 10:30/mile, but I did not know there was going to be so many hills. Oh well, maybe next time! I'm just so glad I actually went out there and ran the full race. I also saw my coach at the finish line and she yelled, "GO STEPHANIE!" which made me feel good.

Now I kind of know what to look forward to for the Dallas WR Half and I am pretty excited and stoked about it. Bring on the 13.1 miles!

So far, so good!

And hopefully I'm not going to jinx myself! lol

So I took 3 days off last week but ran on Friday. I had a pretty good run. I ran about 3.5 miles, and 2 miles was a tempo run, both below 10:00/each. Not too bad. I didn't have any problems with my back the rest of the day, or the rest of the weekend so it has to be the shoes.

I took the weekend off since we were out of town. Yesterday I did a total of 6.5 miles and ran the first 3 miles without a walk break and here were my times:

10:14

9:59

10:03

I then took a walk break and alternated walking/running the rest of the way back. Obviously I need to work on keeping my pace about even, and I think I need to slow down so I can go a little further. I had a longer run last Monday, but my pace was a little slower. I'm ok with that.

I can't wait to run again tomorrow now that I have a new pair of shoes and I'm having some good runs! I've got the Tour de Fleur race coming up on Sept. 19th, which is a 10k, so I really need to spend the next 10 days focusing on getting to 6 miles straight.

One step forward, 2 steps back

Sometimes I feel like I can't catch a break when it comes to running! After my awesome run on Monday, I get a call from Luke's Locker saying that the shoes I ordered are backordered in my size until December. Lovely. So now I have to get new shoes from somewhere else, which really isn't that big of a deal, just kind of a bummer to have to search other places. 

Monday night I was suppose to work from 4p-12a and I was all excited to tell people about my awesome run. My back was still hurting, but nothing I couldn't handle. Then I go into work and it starts to get worse as I'm constantly bending over to assess patients, start IV's, up and down on the computer, etc. By 8pm my lower back muscles were so tight that it hurt to breathe! I was in a lot of pain, and my co-workers could tell. I told our teamlead that someone needs to go home early, PLEASE let it be me. He could tell I was in a lot of pain. About 30 minutes later the charge nurse said I could go home. I was really upset that 1) my back was hurting so bad, 2) I had to leave work early because of it, and 3) I had no insurance to do anything about it! As I walked out of work, I started crying. I hate having things go wrong and not knowing why or not being able to do anything about it. Needless to say, as soon as I got home, I got on the computer and applied to BCBS for some insurance. I should have some insurance by next week. Thank God.

So if you haven't figured it out by now, guess who's back to taking some rest days off. ME. I will be so happy when I can actually finish one week of training according to the schedule. Ugh.