Porta-Potty Monday (literally)

Imagine starting your work day (a Monday no less) to this e-mail:

“There has been a water main break on campus.  Currently there is no water pressure in our building for “essentials”.   We have not been able to determine which parts of campus have water pressure and which don’t at this point, so frankly, if you need to use the bathroom, you will have to drive off campus.”

At first I thought it was a joke. They expect us to drive 15 minutes off campus to use the bathroom and then drive back? Yeah, okay. If that was the case shouldn’t they be sending us home? 

But sure enough not even 5 minutes later they sent out another e-mail saying the water main wouldn't be fixed until at least the early afternoon and then another half hour later that the issue would NOT be fixed before the end of the work day and they were renting porta-potties. Happy Monday everyone! 

This is all on the heels of a very difficult night’s sleep. My Sunday was really relaxed for the most part and spent in some variation of this set up: 

However, when it came time to sleep it just was not happening. Like most people I use the weekends to catch up on sleep I don’t get throughout the week. Only instead of rewarding me for the extra rest, my body boycotts my desired sleep schedule when it comes time to return to work since I slept so well two nights in a row. Essentially, it comes time for me to go to bed at 9 o’clock and my body thinks, “but you’re so well rested! Just stay up another hour or two." I didn’t fall asleep till after 11 and with a 5:30am wake up call I was not pleased...

Let’s talk about something that will put me in a better mood… like my Saturday long run. Saturday’s run was… incredible. It was 16 miles of “I can’t believe I am keeping up this pace and feeling so good doing it”. 

I slept in and got a much needed 10 hours of sleep of Saturday. However, this meant by the time I did Jillian, got my running stuff together and ate my pre-run breakfast it was 10am and getting warm. Treadmill running did not sound appealing so I decided to just go for it. I could use the experience running in the heat just in case the marathon temps were warm. I set out not knowing exactly what route I was going to run and it was somewhat liberating. I ended up doing about 3 miles around my neighborhood before deciding to run the 3.5 miles to the one and only trail near me. The trail is mostly flat with some rolling hills, but it is also 100% wide in the open with no trees to shield from wind or the sun so it can get kind of harsh. I didn’t want to have to deal will all the twists and turns and hills of my neighborhood though. I just wanted to RUN.

A much prettier picture of the trail than I could take.

Time wise my first mile was around 9:20 and my last was 8:30 (my last 5 were all under 9:00). I was honestly trying to go slower at the end, but the slower I went the worse I felt. Not sure if that is good? The temps started out at about 68 degrees and ended hovering right around 80. It actually wasn't too bad. 

Overall, I finished 2:22 minutes or an average of around 9 minute miles. Considering my goal marathon pace is 8:50 per mile and I wasn’t running at 100% on Saturday I am feeling pretty good about my goal.

This morning’s run was weird. I usually get up and do Jillian before my runs to warm up and wake up, but since I slept so poorly last night I decided to take the extra half hour of sleep and just do my run. This resulted in a weird sleepy run for the first few miles. The first mile especially I barely remember running. Regardless I was able to keep up an average pace of 8:49 minute miles for 8 miles with my first mile at 9:04 and my last at 8:39. 

That pretty much catches us up to now… unless you want me to complain more, because if you did I might mention that I’ve had 14 angry PBS viewers call me today or that I was stuck in awful traffic on my way to work which means I got in late, which means I have to stay late... but no one wants to hear that. Instead I’ll talk about how my flight to Chicago leave in almost exactly 24 days!

Anyone else have a story (good or bad) about their Monday?