Swag mail and pooptastic long runs

After 18 miles on Friday at a 7:55 pace, I hunkered down in the ice bath, put on calf compression sleeves, and laid about until I needed to move.

My sister and I took my dad out for his 64th birthday that evening. We normally chip in with my brother to give him an expensive bottle of wine, but my sister came up with the idea to do a daddy/daughters meal. 

Saturday, I worked. I was kind of glad to be moving about all day to give my legs some active recovery. Walking around 20,000 square feet of a store for 8 hours is certainly helpful sometimes.  Given that I had dinner with my dad that previous night and neglected to enjoy my post long run wings, Adam and I went to our favorite BBQ place to get my fix. They have smoked wings that they flash fry and then coat in BBQ sauce. Heavenly.

Sunday, I ran 4 easy miles at an 8:34 pace on the TM. Nothing exciting. Went to work and then came home to watch the boring Super Bowl. I made jambalaya and worked on the taxes some more during the second half. Obviously, we were not at a Super Bowl party...

Yesterday, I spent the day chillin' with Adam and the pups.

Filed the federal and state taxes (woot!), cleaned the entire house, did a little light plumbing under my sink (re: clean the hairballs out), finished some laundry, picked up materials for my Shamrock tutu, and came home to relax.

My sister called to discuss wedding stuff and I was wandering the house. The dog on the left barks whenever I am on the phone (just me, not Adam, rawr!) and so I have to pace so she leaves me alone.  Good thing because I stopped in front of the front door and saw I had received a package from Steve, aka runningplaces9919, aka the Thelma to my Louise in the Rehoboth road trip.

Awesomeness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the Lady Cave, where the treadmill lives, there is a growing wall of my runner swag.  I am pretty stoked to have a cool piece to anchor all of this stuff AND something new to motivate me on the TM.

This is the current state of affairs:

I'll post pics when I get the post framed and hung. Yippee!

I worked a bit on my Shamrock tutu last night until I ran out of tulle:

It's either going to fun to run in or annoy the bejeezus out of me.  I'll let y'all know next month.

And lastly, today I went on a 21 mile run. I had to cram my long runs within in a short period of time because of my work schedule.  Besides, I figured it would be good training for my weekends-apart marathons. 

It was pretty yuck until about the last 3 miles. Ha! I think I had too much liquid (re: GI issues) and my legs were definitely still tired from Friday's effort. There is a rather large asterisk at just before mile 4 because I saw one of my co-workers at the skate park that's right off the Greenway and I stopped to talk to him for about 20 minutes.  And I did stop to use the bathroom twice--ugh!

I haven't lost my mojo thankfully. This was definitely more about physical tiredness and less about my mental state. Probably would have helped if I was actually running my LSD slow... But today I was actually trying to escape the rain as well. I finished about 30 minutes before it started to come down. Right now a cutback week is looking pretty appetizing, but I'll make that determination next Monday.