Saturday run

It was hard this morning!! Not sure why. Maybe my body is still trying to get used to the heat and humidity. I felt like I was walking an awful lot! And I thought this was supposed to be a 'running' group!!! My coach, Mark, says the summer is the time to slow down and train aerobically. So I am trying very hard to keep my heart rate below 150. That is pretty hard to do and still run around my neighborhood! But I am determined to follow his advice and keep going slowly. Just to give you an idea: I "ran" 5 miles in 1:15. Of course, there are lots of hills to navigate - that gets my heart rate up just walking up those things!
I think next time I will run 1:30 and walk 1:00 and see if I can still keep my heart rate down.
This summer we are training using what Mark calls GRIT. It stands for something, but I really can't remember it right now... :-0 We run and then do some muscular strengthening exercises, then run some more, then some more exercises. That's on Mondays. Then on Thursdays, we are running hills - not very steep ones. All the time he is encouraging us to keep our heart rates down. Again, very difficult!!! Sometimes very frustrating!!! He expects us to run long and slow on the weekends on our own. So, that is what I did today.
I keep reminding myself to keep looking to the future - I want to be a strong, fit, healthy runner. So, don't worry about today - just "git er done" :-)

The last day of school...

... you remember it, don't you? The excitement of the last day. Tests are done. Your locker is cleaned out. Looking forward to summer... Sleeping in... Swimming everyday... Looking forward to VACATION! Well, that's where I am right now. :-) For all you non-school teachers - are you jealous???? :-)
Actually, most of us teachers don't really take the summer off. For example, I will be getting up every morning and going to coach a summer league swim team at Rhodes College. I also get to wake up Kirsten and Chelsea to go with me. :-) :-) Chelsea is one of the swimmers on the team and Kirsten and I will be coaching the 8 & unders again this summer. They are a blast - so cute and full of energy! More later about these kids...
Anyway, summer is here and I am ready for it!!! I hope all of you have great summer plans.

The best kept secret...

We are not known for keeping secrets around my house. I'm probably THE WORST at it. However, this time we did it!!! We kept a BIG secret for about 3 months! Nigel's brother and sister-in-law decided to travel from England to attend Kirsten's graduation and we thought it would be fun to surprise her. :-) We wanted to surprise Chelsea too - of course that would keep our secret even safer... for those of you that know how Chelsea likes to talk...hahaha!
Anyway, Thursday night when Nigel came home from work, he walked in the door with Stephen and Lynne in tow. Chelsea's mouth dropped open - it was a great reaction! She was totally surprised! "Oh my gosh, what are YOU doing here?!?!?!?!" We didn't really need to explain, she figured out pretty quickly we wanted to surprise Kirsten for her graduation.
So, yesterday (Friday) we all drove up to Evansville. During that 5 hour drive we were thinking of ways to get Kirsten to come out to the car to meet us. In the end, I just called her to come out "because I can't remember how to get to your apartment". Well, she "fell" for that lame excuse and came out. When she got to the parking lot Stephen and Lynne hopped out of the car. Kirsten just kind of stopped, and with this blank look on her face said, "What the crap?" It was really pretty funny. She was sooooo surprised. It was great fun to watch it all unfold.
It will be a great graduation weekend and a fun week with Stephen and Lynne. :-)