I had the day off from work today and took a rest day from running, since I am running a 10K race tomorrow. I spent the day doing errands, watched the movie The Imposible, and then did more errands. Once Barry got home from work we took Hank and Scout to Petsmart to get some more dog food.

They love going to the store because of all of the attention they get. They don’t have much interest in other dogs, but they both absolutely love people. On the way home they decided they both needed to sleep on the center console of the truck, even though they have the whole back seat.

Silly puppies. It amazes me the positions that are apparently comfortable for them to sleep in.

So this race tomorrow, the Appalachian Power Festival Run, will be my second ever 10K. When I signed up for the race my goal was to beat my time from my first 10K. I ran 57:33 back in March, so I think my goal for tomorrow is still to beat that time. Ideally I’d like to run under 57 minutes. But with the way my calves and Achilles have been lately I know that may not be realistic. I will have to go by feel and back off if my Achilles catch fire like they have been doing lately.

If that ends up being the case, I will be okay with that. I want to be healthy for the Varmint 1/2 Marathon in three weeks. Either way, the weather looks perfect for running tomorrow so it will be a good day.

If you have dogs or other pets, do they ride in your vehicle well?
Hank and Scout have always been great travelers. They don’t get carsick and they mostly sleep the whole way.

Anyone racing this weekend?? Good luck if you are!

Have you ever heard of fainting goats? Below is a video about them, if you haven’t. Basically their muscles freeze for around ten seconds when they’re startled.

You probably guessed it already, but the goats that I run past are fainting goats! They don’t faint quite like the ones on the video, because they can kind of build up a tolerance meaning they don’t fully faint. So when I run by and they’re at the fence, they turn to run around and their hind ends go stiff but their front legs still work. So they “half faint”. It makes me laugh every time!

This evening my in-laws are coming by for dinner tonight. They are on their way home from a trip and our house is on the way! It’s always nice to see them. I’m making cornbread chicken pot pie for dinner.

It’s a recipe out of my Campbell’s Casseroles, One-Dish Meals, and More recipe book that my grandparents got me for Christmas back in 2008. This is one of our favorite simple dinners. The only thing I change from the recipe is I don’t top it with cheddar cheese. The pot pie itself has chicken, corn, and cream of chicken soup and is topped with cornbread mix. I made tonight’s pot pie with sweet corn from last fall that we vacuum packaged and froze. One hundred times better than store-bought corn!

Have you ever seen/heard of fainting goats before?

What is your simple, go-to, family-favorite dinner?

Do you ever get “farm fresh/garden fresh” foods? Do you have a garden?
We don’t have a garden, but Barry always brings home sweet corn from the farm in the fall.

Continuing prayers for Oklahoma.
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Today we had duck weather all day long, and by that I mean it was raining. At times it was storming, but it was just plain old rain when I headed out for my run after work.

This evening I did a 4 mile easy run on the Dora Trail (the bike trail in town). I kept it at a comfortable pace and my Achilles were still bothersome, but not as bad they were during yesterday’s tempo run. I didn’t have to stop and stretch during my run, but I did lots of stretching and foam rolled my calves when I got home. Hopefully my Achilles will stop being jerks soon. 

The trail is really pretty right now, with a bunch of flowers in bloom along the trail. I tried to snap a quick picture today with my phone. It came out a little blurry since I was tyring to be quick since it was pouring down rain. Don’t ask why I had to have a picture of the trail on a rainy day…. I don’t know. Speaking of the rain, I really enjoyed running in the rain today. It was nice and cool (mid-60’s) and the rain made my run kind of invigorating. I also got to see a deer during my run today.

He/she stayed put in that spot and watched me run by, and then decided to take off. I also saw him/her hanging out in the same general area on my way back to the start of the trail.

After my run and before my foam rolling session I swung by the grocery store and stocked up. Look at all the fruit!!

Carrots, cantaloupe, honeydew, pears, apples, bananas, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, and avocado!!

The cantaloupe and honeydew were $2 each and they will feed me for over a week. However, if I had bought the small pre-cut container of cantaloupe or honeydew it cost $4.35 and would feed me for a day. Crazy!

I wanted to apologize for my downer post yesterday. Honestly I was just being truthful about how my run went and how I felt about it. It’s not my intention to use my blog to whine or complain. But at the same time if I just act like everything is perfect all the time, I’m not being real with you. I want to treat this blog like I’m talking to a friend/running buddy and that means being able to be honest and share details of how my workouts went, both the good ones and the bad ones. Mmkay?

Do you enjoy running in the rain?

Any other big fans of fruit out there?

Tonight I planned to take a week off from the track and do a 6 mile tempo run. I wanted to do a workout that incorporated a sustained effort, but wouldn’t beat me up the way the track seems to, since I have a 10K race on Saturday. And I did run 6 miles tonight, but I’m not sure it could necessarily be considered a tempo run. Miles 2-5 were faster, but that was the only way my run resembled a tempo.

I used the x-large size so you could see a little better

This morning I met up with Kim for a long run. We ran 10 miles on the Dora and New River Trails. It wasn’t hot outside, but it was really humid and I was sweating buckets by the end of the first mile. I actually drank close to two water bottles full of water during this run, which is more than I drink during a long run when it’s in the 80’s but not humid. Thank goodness for the water spigot at the head of the New River Trail.

I got all of my chores done yesterday so that I could just relax today after my long run. I have a bunch of TV shows to catch up on, a good book that I’ve been reading, blogs to catch up on, and a Netflix movie. The movie we have right now is “Rise of the Guardians”. It’s a kids movie, but I guess it looked good and/or funny when I saw the preview, so I put it on the list. I often put movies on the list if the preview looks good (before they’re even in the theater) and then when they finally come in the mail months later I can’t even remember what they’re about.

As soon as I got home from my long run I dumped the ingredients for cream cheese chicken chili into the crock pot for tonight. Don’t you love meals that you just put in the crock pot and forget about until dinner time?

Crock pot liners are the best invention ever. I’m also going to make cornbread to go with the chili. I use Jiffy cornbread mix, and in my opinion it’s the best kind.

I had wild woman hair during our run, thanks to the humidity

Do you use Netflix?
We just have the basic DVD’s in the mail plan