Last week went pretty well for most runs. Nothing super exciting to report.

I borrowed a pair of racing flats from Tyler at work so that I could do my 6 X 400 at the Nike track in actual Nike shoes, rather than my preferred Saucony A5s. The flats I borrow were great! I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what they are, because like most of employee's shoes, they were samples with no labels. Turns out they're from Japan, which just got incorporated into US Nike, so not available for purchase :(. Tyler's letting me borrow them until November since he doesn't do track workouts anyways.

We were east of Mt Hood this weekend with Ian's fam bam for Labor day, so both Saturday's and Sunday's runs were at 4500 ft. Which I felt, a lot. 10 min/mile pace felt a lot closer to 7:30s than I would have liked. Saturday morning was spent biking 7 miles with the hoseks in the rain and less clothes than needed, so by the afternoon run, I was pretty pooped. Dad ran with me for the 3 miles, which ended up being 2.7 miles, but I figured that was fine since I was going much harder (though also slower) than the easy run that it was supposed to be. It was fun to run with Maddie and Riley, since Riley decided to come along without an invitation. I'm sure Maddie would enjoy another dog to run with. I think Dad also really enjoyed having the dogs to run with.

On Sunday I was hoping to run in the morning while everyone else hiked, but plans changed/got delayed, so I ran in the late afternoon around 4ish. I ended up running the same 7 mile loop that we biked the day before and was really impressed by how much of the train I remembered. I recognized more of the trail than I ever do, even when I've run it multiple times before. This made me realize that I want to fore-ride the half marathon course in sisters to get a good idea of what's going to happen on it. Ian and Dusty rode the loop ahead of me with Nellie and Riley, so I got to do the run all on my own. It went uphill for the first 4ish miles, then descended quickly after that. Eric said something to me right as we left that I dwelled on for the entire uphill portion, which kept my mind off of my pounding heart. I ran/fast hiked the uphill, aiming 13 min/miles on the hiking. I think I managed to achieve this, but really don't know since my watched couldn't keep gps connected for the life of it. The downhill showed up right when I needed it to and I flew down it.

I'm normally not much of a downhill runner, but I was so excited not to be hiking that I let all my normal worries go and just ran. I haven't check my watch, but I think I averaged between 6:30s and 7:00 min/mile miles during the downhill section. It felt great! and was a lot of fun! I ended up finishing the loop in just under 1:10, which was pretty amazing since it took be almost 50 minutes to do just the uphill.

I ended up sitting in the stream by the camp for 5 minutes afterwards because I was so scared of feeling the downhill on Monday. Turns out it worked because I was barely sore and Tuesday's run felt great.

I'm dealing with a little plantar fascia stuff on my right foot, but it doesn't seem to be getting any worse, so I'm just ignoring it for now and avoiding any squishy shoes during work.

I'm also missing biking a lot. Running's fun, but just not the same as road biking. I'm enjoying swimming once a week and am trying to stick with that, but more would be nice as well. Plus I'm missing climbing, once a week is not enough for that, but it's a sacrifice I'm just going to make.