New Trail Shoes are coming!!!

I received an email from Vibram today about winning the trail shoe contest. I responded with my shoe size and address. If the shoes arrive in time, I'll register for the XTERRA Pig Trail 10K race in Macon, GA on July 26th. I can't believe I won a pair of $110 trail shoes! I'm still a bit scared to run in the woods, but will liberally apply insect repellant and check my entire body for ticks afterwards.

My original plan was to go to the High School track to do my run tonight. But when I got there it was full of the track team doing work outs. So I went back home to hop on the treadmill. When I arrived back home I found Riley removing the stuffing from the couch pillow, AGAIN!!! BAD DOG! The dogs laid on the basement floor beside me. The training plan called for 6.25 miles with 5x400m pick-ups. This is something that I wanted to do on flat land (track or treadmill) rather than on the hilly neighborhood because my shins are sore. I started out at 5 mph and took a few 1-minute walk/drink breaks about 20 minutes apart. When I got to 4 miles I began the quarter mile pick-ups. The first one I simply ran at 6 mph, followed by a 5 mph quarter mile. The second one I did the same. Then I thought, "these are supposed to be 'pickups'". So at the third one, I started at 6 mph and increased by 0.1 mph for every .025 mile ending at 7 mph then returning to 5 mph for the recovery quarter mile. I struggled through the first 4 miles (shins hurting), but the last 2.25 miles were better because of the constantly changing pace. My shins were killing me but I pushed through it. Afterwards, I did lots of stretching and massaging my shins. I think I'll wear running shoes tomorrow instead of high-heels to help my shins recover. I'm glad tomorrow is a cross-training day.