The Vacation Influence

Hail my running brothers and sisters!  Today was my daughter's kindergarten graduation, tomorrow is my son's last day of school and in less than 2 days my family heads off on vacation with our family-friends to the southern Land of the Mouse.  Needless to say, my household is in high gear prepping for our trip.  We have snacks in the corner of the pantry, piles of folded laundry sorted for trip and non-trip, and stacks of comics and reading material (not all mine, I swear) to be crammed into duffle bags.  My kids have been so ready for vacation, they "packed" a week ago (I"m afraid to go through their bags, but I'm sure they're stuffed with every doll, action figure, Lego and DS game imaginable).  For my part, I have to sort through which running shoes (someone has to run and fetch Fastpasses.  It may as well be me) to bring, how many tech shirts I'll need (I need that breathable fabric for all my profuse perspiration!  Stinky.), and what kind of socks should I wear (I favor the ankle socks, but they leave a funny tan, after all).  At work, I've poured through every paper on my desk to make sure I leave as little as possible unfinished (to keep people from snooping through my office).  All this being said, I've had very little time to train this week (i.e. I'm tired and I want to take a nap).  I'd be upset if it wasn't still so early into my training program (i.e. It won't hurt anything if I have bacon with my pancakes).  I figure that I can afford a couple weeks of recovery time (sleep and eating candy) this summer before I really hit my training hard (to make up for all those pancakes and candy).  I'm still planning on doing some running next week (Ha!), but I figure my runs will mostly be early (Double Ha!  Not unless the trails are in your bed, lazy ass) before we hit the parks.  Probably just easy runs for not longer than an hour (you betcha), but you never know (not really, I do know.  And it ain't gonna be pretty), I may throw in a tempo run or two to spice it up (or just sleep in).

If you've been following Biggest Loser, like me, this season, then you most likely watched the finale last night.  Michael won losing over half his starting weight.  Say what you want about the artificial conditions of the show, but that is a HUGE weight loss in 8 months!  So a quick congratulations to him.  I hope he sticks with the weight loss (he said that he wasn't done yet), because I think the show, at the very least, gives a platform for living healthier lives that the contestants can promote nationwide.  On a side note, anyone else think that Daris's popularity screwed him and Koli?  If America hadn't voted Daris to compete in the final 3, he would have won the at-home competition prize of $100,00.00 and Koli would have beaten Michael by over 3% total weight loss.  Way to go America.  Where was the Samoan love?  

Now for the hard numbers:  Today I did a short set of half-mile intervals with quarter mile recoveries.  I did 5x.50 mi intervals at 3:14, 3:19, 3:22, 3:22 and 3:29 respectively.  My slowest recovery lap was 2:17.  All right, that's all I have for now.  Later kids!