This morning I was scheduled to run 3 miles at a “moderate” pace.  I got up early so that I could beat the heat and set out for my run.

And the run was… fine.  But since I’m new to running, I’m still pretty slow.  And this morning, I felt even slower than usual.  In fact, for parts of the run, I practically felt like I was running in place.

Runners… help me out here.  Do you ever feel like your body just isn’t cooperating with your heart and head?!  Any tips on how to pick up the pace?

I’ve been reading Jeff Galloway’s book on running, because I had heard that it was the “must read” for runners.

And I’m getting a lot of useful information out of it, but I’m wondering about the effectiveness of his “walk-run” technique.  He strongly encourages runners to take walk breaks throughout their runs.  So for example, you might run 5 minutes and walk 1 minute.  He goes into a lot of detail to explain the benefits of these walk breaks… preventing injury, preventing fatigue, improving your overall race time, etc.

I tried this for the first time on Sunday, during my run with Brandon in Chicago.  Although I don’t think Brandon was thrilled with the idea of walk breaks, he agreed to try it, to see if it would help me.

So each mile, we took a minute walk break.  And on that run, I felt great.  So I thought that maybe the walk breaks were a good idea.  But then today, I did 5 minutes running and 1 minute of walking, and yet I felt lethargic and slow.

Maybe I just felt really good on Sunday because we were exploring a new city on our run, and the walk breaks had nothing to do with it?  Or maybe today was just a rough day…?

If any runners out there have some words of wisdom, I’d sure love to hear them!

After my run, I iced my knees and then made my first smoothie with my new blender!

I just threw a few ingredients in, and it turned out really tasty, which made my quite happy (and proud of myself!).

Here’s what I did:

• 1/2 cup milk
• about 1/2 tbsp peanut butter
• 1/2 scoop chocolate protein powder (our scoop is huge!)
• 1/2 frozen banana
• 6-7 ice cubes

Blended it all up, and served it with peanut butter toast and coffee.

The smoothie just tasted like a chocolate-banana milkshake, with a hint of peanut butter.  Delicious and satisfying!

Time for laundry…. yahoo!!   But come back later, because I’m currently baking up some sweet treats!