i made it to my first saturday practice this weekend. well, physically i was there, the rest of me was still snuggled in bed. 7 am is early to function on a weekday basis but 7 am on the weekend is on an entirely new level. now factor in that saturdays are also our long runs and imagine what i looked like... bedheaded and sleepy eyed with untied sneaks dragging my butt to bethesda at 6:30.

once i arrived i perked up a bit and was ready to go. i joined forces with my coach and new friend tracey to lead the pack of us marathoning newbies on a 7.7 run around the park.

we conquered a full loop of the park, harlem hill without complaining, and a negative split of the lower loop! a negative split is fancy runner lingo for running the 2nd half of a race faster than the 1st. (in our case we ran the 2nd time around the lower loop faster.)

we completed our workout in an hour and 13minutes and didnt collapse afterwards. actually our spirits were high! that was the furthest distance any of us have ever ran. we accomplished more before 9am than most people do all weekend!

im looking forward to tomorrows practice even if we are starting hills (groan) we are testing how fast we can run a mile and im excited to see my new friends! yay for new friends!

even more exciting than practice tomorrow is testing out new sneakers tonight! woohoo! i worked very hard this weekend picking up extra shifts at the restaurant and i made enough money to invest in a new pair of training shoes. yay! finally!

"rain never hurt a runner... but lightening might!"

fortunately there was no lightening last night and although my run was soggy id say it was refreshing!

last nights workout: run to park (approx .5 mi) 2 times around lower bridle loop (1.66m each/ 3.32mi total) run home. workout total 4.32mi! a nice easy run but my feet KILL today! time for new shoes!

team practice tonight. we're doing 2 lower loops of the park weather permitting. and according to weather.com's forecast, so far so good! starting this week we are working on our effort levels aka figuring out how much we can challenge and how much we should challenge ourselves during workouts. this week E2 and E3.

sending out more letters today. hopefully the donations will start coming in soon!