Update On Challenge + Long Run Sunday

20 days into the NEW CHALLENGE. I am not going to lie. It is miserable! I have had my 3 main “Sunday” treats. But I have strayed just a bit.

I first want to say: I NEVER ONCE cheated on the last challenge. Was that because it was only 30 days? Was it because I was eating absolutely NO treats? They were just off limits! OR Was it because it was my first challenge?!

That being said: I cheated technically once but if you ask Dan twice! Let me go through the desserts that I have eaten.

The peanut butter cup blizzard after Cascade Lakes!

A peanut butter oreo shake from Skyline Burgers. (This was the cheat. I will explain in a minute)

Chocolate cake/Puff pastry in Olympia (The reason I was not doing a NO-treats challenge up to HTC)

I feel like they were all great. Totally worth the wait!! I am already dreaming of what I will have after HTC.

Here is the big reason for the 1st cheat. I was “hired” to make some rolo brownies for Stephanie’s birthday. I had planned to make them on Tuesday night and have a small brownie as my treat for the week. Well I had the shake already(totally worth it) but I still wanted a brownie. I ate one and it was delicious!!

Stephanie called me evil but still said thanks! She also said they were sooooooo good! I love making my friends treats. They usually do not disappoint even though I had to take a cheat treat!! 🙂

Lesson learned: If I am going to make a treat for someone else it has to be on Sunday when the scheduled treat is already going to happen!!!

The 2nd-NON cheat was zucchini bread. Dan and I went to a party and we received a zucchini as a “parting gift.”

As you can see it was giant. The only thing you can do with a GIANT zucchini is make bread. I found this recipe: The best zucchini bread ever! I had a BBQ to go to Thursday night so we took a kale salad and the bread. It pretty much was the best zucchini bread ever! Everyone at the BBQ loved it.

It just so happened that it had dark chocolate chunks in it. I did not believe the bread was a cheat but Dan kept insisting it was. 😦 I had a piece or 3 and it was delicious but I would not call it dessert. Just saying…..

The other bad news is my boss brought in brownies. Shit!!! I love brownies!!! Luckily I was only in the office for 2 days this week. I was trying to avoid looking at them!! 🙂

Judy said they were dry so that made me feel a little bit better!

We will see what happens in Seattle, HTC, and Seaside this weekend. I am going to try to be good. It is probably good that I will be with all runners. You know runners—they eat nothing good especially the fast ones!!! I may be good after all!

I wanted to tell you very quickly about my long run on Sunday. 18.5 miles. I ran 4.2 miles by myself to Dan’s house. Picked him up and ran 14.3 with him. I really wanted to try to keep a 10:45 minute/mile average. I had planned on doing a flat 18 but we did hilly miles from 4.2-12. Finished the last 6.5 on the waterfront.

I had a positive attitude from the beginning. I just wanted to get out there and see what I could do! It was a success after 4 gu’s, 3 bottles of Nuun, and 3 hours and 15 minutes I was done. I was still feeling good at mile 13 but 5 was still a long ways a way! We sped up and were averaging 10:30s and sometimes a little faster. Mile 18 was our fastest mile: 9:41 and our last half mile was 9:44 pace.

It felt really good to speed up and still have juice left at the end of a long run. I am going to try to keep the averages at 10:30-10:45s for the remainder of my long runs.

55 days until Chicago!!

Any good stories about long runs or runs in general?