Double workout Monday.

Yesterday I got a call from my friend Holly asking me to run with her today.  She planned to do about 20 miles because she is gearing up to run with another friend, Mike Evans, next week during a portion of his run across Idaho.  Click (here) to learn more about Mike and his efforts to raise money and awareness for a great cause while he runs 50+ miles a day for 8-9 days!

Anyway, I wasn't up to running all 20 with her today, since I just ran 9 on Saturday, but I thought I could help her break it up a bit.  She came by my house at 6:30 this morning and we ran a 5.15 mile loop, then as we passed by my house, I dipped out while she ran another loop.  My hip was bothering me a bit, so I did 40 minutes of Pilates while I waited for her to get back around to my house again.  After she had finished the loop a second time, I jumped back in with her and did (a slightly modified version of) the loop again, this time 4.45 miles.  Then she took off and finished up her 20 miles on her own.  So, in the end I did 9.6 miles and we averaged a pace of about 10:18 min./mile for the whole run.  We've decided to make an effort to try and run together at least once a week, if we can make it work.  The benefit for me from running with Holly is that she pushes me to run faster than I do on my own.  She says she doesn't mind going a bit slower than her typical pace for one run a week if it means we get to spend time together and catch up on things.  She's a great friend.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm not extremely concerned with being a super-speedy runner, but I would like to improve my times and get stronger.  I really think this could help.

Then I spent a busy afternoon with the kids, doing laundry, picking up the house and planning/packing for a three day tent camping trip we have coming up starting on Thursday (it's actually a youth activity for our church which involves a trek pulling handcarts, such as the pioneers used coming across the plains, but more on that later). When Chris got home from work, we went into town and grabbed a quick bite at Subway before heading to the gym to catch an evening spin class.  The spin class was a good one, no surprise there.  Buckets of sweat - oh, so worth it.  After that we went to Wal-Mart to shop for a few more supplies for the weekend.  By the time we finished with all of that, we were both starving again so we made one last stop at Buffalo Wild Wings for some chicken wings and ice cold Coke Zero.  It's a good thing I burned almost 2000 calories today, because I'm sure I ate almost all of them back!

In the morning, I'll do another spin class and at least a mile of running.  So far we're 8 days into the 38 day RW Summer Running Streak Challenge - we'll see how things go this weekend when we go on the trek.  I know I'll be getting in lots of walking/hiking, but I'm not sure about the running.  Well, at least Friday might be the toughest day, but that's the day we'll be doing the most walking.  Thursday I will probably have time to get a quick run in before we leave, and then I may have to do a little catch-up Saturday evening.  It's all good, though.  Keeps me motivated to just keep moving!