Harry Potter, Striding and Long Running

Friday night Jason and I headed to Border's for the Harry Potter release party. It was silly and goofy and all around wonderful. We played some Harry Potter Bingo and then watched as some kinds played a Harry Potter Spelling Bee. Lots of people were dressed up as their favorite characters and I must say, some very clever outfits. We had only reserved one book which was going to be fine because my cousin had pre-ordered one to be delivered and as she is out of town said that I could just read hers. I hadn't quite finished reading book 6 anyways so I thought that would be fine. But I was like....well....I am really going to want it super early tomorrow and what if her copy isn't delivered or whatever. So we just stopped by the Barnes and Nobles that is across the street from the Borders after we got through the mega lines and there was NO ONE there....we walked in and they said, do you want a book we have plenty...I was like...yeah sure. So armed with two copies of The Deathly Hallows we headed home.

I fell asleep at about 2:30am and had a bunch of dreams about running miles within a bookstore...like I kept saying, "I can get a couple miles in because I know where the mile markers are!" Awesome. I woke up at about 6:25...and could have fallen back asleep but I got up and finished off book 6 instead.

Jason got up around 8am and soon after that we headed out for our 7 miles with 8x100m strides. I slowed my pace for the first 7 strides because I have been having this pain in my abdomen area and while I think it's just a pulled muscle of some sort I didn't want to push it if its' something worse (I don't think it's anything terrible as it's been there for about a month and just worse after long or hard runs). The last stride I picked it way up just cause it's fun to go fast :-)

Saturday was spent watching the Cubs and napping for me and of course reading Harry Potter. I am love love loving book 7.

It was to bed early and up early for our 18 mile long run. If we got through this one we would have gotten through 50 miles for the week. The run went well. We stopped a few times for gatorade and had one Gu with us. We had thought about running and staying on the lakefront and then going for a swim. But with my side/stomach hurting ended up thinking it was best to just head home so a day on the couch could start sooner. We averaged 9:01 min/mile total time of 2:42 :

A little jumpy on the paces, but the big jumps are Gatorade and Gu stops. Again hitting the marathon race pace for the last mile or so. Surprising because it didn't feel like we were going that fast...maybe I was numb to the speed. Either way it was over and it wasn't even 9am yet.

Sunday we spent sleeping and reading and watching movies and just a nice relaxing end to a 50 mile week. We have another tough week coming up...but just one day at a time....and today is an off day. Looking at the last 6 months of weekly miles...I'm looking pretty good, gotta love when the graph goes up!


Btw....I still have about 300 pages left in the Harry Potter book (I'm taking it slow since it's the last one) and I can't read anything online or in the papers because I don't want the ending given away...DO NOT SAY ANYTHING IN THE COMMENTS ABOUT THE BOOK IF YOU HAVE FINISHED IT :-)