weekly run down

Snow just in time for the California Bionano crew's visit

What a week!  I have been super busy at work and the company we are a service provider for, Bionano Genomics, had several techs come to KSU to work on our machine and to hash out some new protocols.  I am sure excited about having updates of both to make my life easier!  It has been frustrating, but super cool to go through the evolution of this company.  We were laughing at how at the beginning, I had to sort of put the chips together myself before I could even run them!  Now they can sequence an entire human genome in one chip in one 24 hour period!!!!!!  This is WAY to awesome for me to even fathom!  We had some late nights and some fun days and I can't wait for them to come again.  Usually, they only come when we are having problems, so this was the first time they came to just work on stuff and learn together and learn we did!

Of course having visitors meant some eating out, some beers, and some changing of my beloved schedule.  Add a crazy one day snow storm to make the roads icky and it got interesting.  I was hoping to get back to five a week runs this week, but it just wasn't meant to be.  I was determined not to freak out about it as I use to.  Type A here, remember:)  Anyway, I did my speed work Tuesday even though I had planned on switching my tuesday and thursday work outs.  My legs felt like lead, the road I do my repeats on was a muddy mess, and some weirdo kept driving up and down where I was running, which made me have to keep stella on a leash, BUT when it was over, I felt so badass!!!!  I may or may not have gotten a great strength work out as well with the amount of mud I was carrying on my shoes.  Stella also got pretty muddy, so we had a bath post run.  She wasn't real thrilled about it, but we got it done.  Then I didn't get to run again till friday on my way home from work.  The guys left around 3 and my experiments finished up around 3:30, so I changed at work and hit linear trail.  Thanks to the snow melting, it was pretty muddy still, so once again, strength training and running all wrapped up into one session.

Still playing around with the fitsnap app.  This was no filter though!

I had to also switch my long run and recovery run days, which I think was a good thing because my legs felt very tired friday from tuesday's work out.   It was also a very gorgeous day, so post run, we spent quite a bit of time in the park just soaking up the 70 degree winter day.

Today was my scheduled long run.  I was a little worried because I had some half marathon pace miles in the middle of my long run.  I should also say that this is the pace I want to run for my next PR, so a little faster than what I have ever run a longer run.   I warmed up a few miles with my BRF who had run a race the day before (and WON 2nd place in her age group WTG) and then I peeled off and got a few miles at my HMP.  It felt good, not too tough, but I did have to repeat the mantra "strong" to keep me going.  I did think to myself a few times can I really run this pace for an entire half?   I gelled right after my speed work was done and then started up again with some easier paced running.  I ended up doing over 8.5 miles total and I felt GREAT!  Major runners high here.  Still kind of floating on a cloud.  

Afterwards stella and I completed our instagram challenge for the day, taking a pic of us stretching out our calves.  I am really having fun with this one for sure.  I am new to instagram, and having fun looking at people's pictures