9.15 miles and other stuff.

The rain we had earlier in the week has helped bring the temperatures down just a bit, so instead of setting my alarm and getting up (too) early, I decided to just let my body wake up when it felt ready and then head out for my run.  Of course, I didn't really sleep in that much...I was out the door by 6:40am.  It was a beautiful morning.  I felt pretty good for most of my run, other than the usual pain in my left hamstring, which seemed to be exacerbated by some residual soreness from my leg work on Monday.  That's okay, I'm working on learning to embrace the pain I feel when I run.  I'm starting to realize that there may be no such thing as pain-free running, and I'm okay with that.

On days like today, my focus is not on going as fast as I can or worrying about whether I'm feeling strong or not.  I just wanted to enjoy my run, and I did.  I spent a lot of time lost in thought about things going on in our lives right now, which actually made the miles fly by faster.  I even saw a little mule deer fawn right off the side of the road.  Poor thing had gotten separated from it's mother.  I watched her jump a fence from about a 1/4 mile back, and by the time I reached the spot where I saw the mother deer jump, I saw the little fawn trying to figure out how to get across the road to her.  I tried to take a picture of the cute thing with my phone, but it didn't turn out very well.

After I finished just over 9 miles, I did a 45 minute Pilates/Yoga fusion video, then I did 20 minutes of strength training using hand weights, focusing on shoulders and traps.