Yep, life is good

This weekend, I matured as a dog parent.  All of Lucy's life, I haven't been able to trust her off leash.  This is partially due to her distractibility, love of chasing things, and love of being chased.  But mainly it's due to my anxiety as a doggy mom.  I have nightmarish images of her chasing a squirrel on a hike and not being able to find her way back (yes, I know she's a hound dog with an amazing sense of smell) or jumping in the lake for a swim, taking off, and never making it back (again, silly, because she has some pretty extreme separation anxiety issues with me).  So most of her life, she hasn't been able to spend much time off leash.  This weekend was different though.

We spent the last 2 days at my friends' lake lot about 45 minutes outside of Seattle, which is a plot of land that is fenced in on 3 sides and then goes out to the lake on the 4th side.  So in all reality, she doesn't have many places to go when let off leash.  Except way far out into the lake, which she seemed to have no interest in doing.  Still, I was anxious about letting her off the 30 foot tether I brought with me.  Nevertheless, I did, and we were both all the happier for it.

Lucy loves to swim.  She might currently be a little anti-running, but stick her in a lake and she will go for hours.

Mid-ear flapping head shake.

Swimming with mom.

Swimming with Frani.

Swimming with Ryan.

Caught by mom and made to stop swimming
for a picture.  Must. Keep. Swimming.

Lucy and I both had a great time hanging out at the lake, swimming, playing games, sitting by the campfire, and generally enjoying the summertime.  And the best part is, we got back about 3 hours ago and Lucy promptly went to her bed, passed out, and literally hasn't moved a muscle since.  Tired doggies are happy doggies.  And Lucy is one happy doggy right now.

So while Lucy continues sleeping, let's talk about running.  Because even though my entire last blog post was all about how awesome riding a bike is and how much running sucks in the summertime, I had 3 days in a row of some really great running.

After writing my "I love biking" post, the next day I thought to myself Tessa, you should go out for a run on this really hot day and try to enjoy it.  Because you love running and you need to remember that.  So I set out for a 5 mile run with a goal in mind.  I wanted to start off slow at about a 9:30 min/mile pace and then increase my pace by 15 seconds each mile.  Here's how I did:

You might notice that I flip-flopped the first 2 miles.  Oops, the rest was
great though.

By the end of this run, I felt really good.  I felt like I had pushed myself harder on my run than I had in a really long time, and it felt great to log an 8:36 mile.  By the time I had hit mile 4, I decided that instead of limiting myself to 8:45, I'd just give all I had.  It worked out nicely, I think.  And of course mile 5 was my cool down, so that 9:28 was perfect.

On Friday, after having this run under my belt from the day before, I decided to do an easier, shorter run.  I had decided that the reason I felt so good on Thursday's run was the negative splits.  I used to be good at doing negative splits (holding back a little in the first half of the run, then speeding up in the second half), but in the past few months I feel like I've lost focus with this skill.  It's something I really want to focus on again, because I think it totally affects my attitude in the second half of the run.  So on Friday's run, my goal was to take it easy, but still focus on getting a negative split.  I ended up logging 3.7 miles and here are my paces for the first 3 miles:

The Nike+ pace charts won't show me my pace for partial miles at the end.
Kind of annoying, Nike should fix this.

I maintained my 9:30 pace for a good warm up mile and then just tried to run comfortably for the next couple miles without looking at my watch or focusing on a goal pace.  I'm happy to see that I'm comfortable at a pace just above a 9:00 min/mile.  

After these 2 confidence-boosting, reminding-myself-how-much-I-love-running runs, I was excited to take on the Torchlight 8K race on Saturday night with some friends.

Good friends.  Beautiful sunshine.  Fun race.  What more
could you ask for?

The Torchlight 8K is a race that takes place on the route of the Torchlight Parade, which is the kickoff to Seafair week in Seattle.  This is my 3rd year doing this race, and I've loved it every time.  The best part of the race is that it happens just prior to the start of the parade, so there are thousands of people lined up along the streets, camped out in chairs, ready to watch the parade.  As you run through, they cheer for you, give you high fives, and for a little while convince you that they are there simply to cheer you on, not watch a parade.  And there's lot of pirates.  Because Seafair is all about pirates.  I got festive and re-wore my red pirate bandanna and red and black striped socks that I got for last year's race.

Last year, I remember struggling through this race a little bit.  It was around a time when I was learning to run faster, but wasn't quite comfortable at the faster paces.  And there are some pretty hefty Seattle hills, especially at the finish.  But this year, I felt great.  I started off the first half of the race with my friend Mark, an old TNT teammate who I haven't run with in a while, and probably ran a little bit slower than I would have by myself.  But that was a good thing, because it helped me conserve energy for the final hills and helped me have my 3rd run in a row with a negative split.

My finishing time was 45:33, an average pace of 8:54.

Could I have run this race faster?  Probably.  Did I need to?  Not really.  Not right now.  Instead, I enjoyed the race.  I enjoyed running.  I remembered why it is that I keep doing this.

After the race, we met up with some other Team in Training folks in the beer garden.  We claimed a corner and waited for all of our friends to come trickling in from the race.  After hanging out for about an hour, talking to teammates and friends from older teams and newer teams, I sat back for a minute and looked around me.  I had a moment where suddenly I was overcome with how happy I was to be where I was, doing what I was doing.  And I didn't want to be anywhere else.  I was in the midst of about 20 friends, happily chatting, catching up, planning new races, and sharing running stories.  And as I sat back and looked around, it occurred to me that all of these amazing people, including me, were brought together by this crazy sport.  Without running (and without Team in Training), it's unlikely that any of us would have ever crossed paths.  If I hadn't started running over 4 years ago, I wouldn't have known a single one of those friends.  I would never have heard their stories, been inspired by their running, or experienced the indescribable feeling of being on a true team.   Because even though our training seasons together have come to an end, we are still here, together, as a strongly bonded team.

And then, I started to get really excited about being a part of the upcoming winter team.  Because now I have another season to look forward to where I get to be a part of this amazing team.  And on the team will be many old teammates and friends, but I will also have to chance to meet new ones.  And hear their stories.  And watch them grow and struggle and succeed and experience the life changing effect that running has on people.  And I will continue to grow and struggle and succeed and change my life by doing so.  The season won't officially start until September (still lots of time for anyone thinking about signing up!), but I'll be counting down the days until I get to do it all over again.  Can't wait.

P.S.  Even though the season doesn't start until September, I'd love to get a jumpstart on my fundraising.  So if you're interested in helping to find a cure for blood cancers and supporting me as I tackle the Goofy Challenge is Disney World, you can donate here!