Halloween

Saturday morning I made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for our Halloween breakfast. They were so good, and they were great fuel for my run.

I took Pete's Garmin and ran up to The Avenues. The Aenues are streets in downtown Salt Lake that are up on the hill so it's a good workout to run up there. It was 44 degrees when I left at about 10 or 11, but I'm sure it warmed up a little by the time I got back. At least I warmed up. I was just wearing a light jacket, but I had to unzip it and I was pretty warm for most of the run.

This was the first time I've done this run with a timer that I could stop at the lights. There are quite a few lights I have to go through so it slows me down quite a bit. I didn't stop it at the first light, but I remembered to on all the following lights after watching my time go up.

Coming down the hill, as always, was really fun and fast. I looked at my speed and it said 8:30 while I was going down, but that had to take into account the flat part of the mile too.

I turned around at 4 miles, and it would have been an 8 mile run if I hadn't had the train stop on the tracks in front of me. I was SO tempted to just climb through between the cars, and I got a little rush just thinking about it, but then I imagined myself getting arrested and decided it wasn't worth it. Even though I was enjoying my run quite a bit, it still felt like a kick in the stomach to have to backtrack 4 bloks and go over a big overpass that I wasn't planning on. So, in all I probably did closer to 9 miles, but I stopped the timer when I got to 8, and just took it nice and slow the rest of the way home, some walking, some jogging. (I didn't want it to affect my average speed!)

Total distance: 8 miles

Total time: 1:16

Average speed: 9:30 (Wahoo!! Take that 10-minute mile pace!)

Here are my mile splits:

1. 9:19
2. 10:00 (first stop light)
3. 9:52
4. 10:35 (hardest part of the hill)
5. 8:31 (fun downhill!)
6. 8:50
7. 9:21
8. 9:32

It was a great run, and I was super happy with my time!

I wore my compression socks under my halloween socks, but I was running around so much the rest of the day (buying fabric for a quilt w/my sis, going to Heber, trick or treating with the kids, cutting the fabric into squares...) that by the end of the day, my legs were really sore, and they were still a little sore the next day. I think going from 7 miles (ahem, 2 weeks ago) to almost 9 miles was a little much, but what can you do when there's a train?

Anyway, here are my trick-or-treaters:

Ethan ended up getting really sick on Sunday so I kept him home from school Monday, just in case so I didn't get a workout in Monday. He's all better, and back to school today so I just need to figure out what to do. Run or bike? Stay tuned to find out what I choose...