How to Save a Life

I've been singing this song all morning. It came on the radio last night when Jimmy (#1 has a name now) and I were riding home in the car. He has a beautiful post-adolescent singing voice, and I don't think he knows how good he sounds.

My mind is on overdrive this morning. I must have gotten a good 6 hours of sleep last night cause I'm not tired yet. LOL. I guess I shouldn't really be tired at 8:40 AM in the morning, but that's just how my day goes most of the time. So I'm sitting here pondering the appropriate title for today's post and it hit me. Voila! How appropriate. The little victories are such a personal joy.

My friend, Denise, over at MNFirefly's Running is training for the P.F. Chang Rock N Roll Marathon in Arizona. She is a member of Team in Training, raising money for the Leukemia Society of America. If you follow Denise's blog, you would know that she has been training diligently. She is committed to doing this, for herself, for people suffering from this horrible disease. Denise has a problem. She needs to have half of her donations committed by November 1. That's about two weeks away. She is approximately $533.00 dollars away from her goal, and she needs your help. If you go by her blog, and click on the Team In Training URL on the right side, you can donate to help her cause. NO AMOUNT IS TOO SMALL. Every little bit helps. Let's help Denise reach her goal so she can focus on what we all luv to do, running.

This disease touches so many peoples lives, both directly and indirectly. Recently Jodi talked about her friend, Steve, who is now fighting this disease himself. Nothing motivates you quite like a friend or family member in need. Our thoughts and prayers are with Jodi and Steve.

Soccer practices were rained out last night. I hate to say it but Yea!! I got a night off. I ended up taking Jimmy out after dinner to get his project bound. I was very happy when we got back home and it was only 8:30 PM. That gave me thirty more minutes of family time to digest my dinner of, you guessed it, Mexican! At 9 PM I was out the door running. I felt like when I left today that I wanted to do an easy three miles. I did not want to do the mindless loop, so I headed out the front entrance down to the main entrance of our subdivision.

The night air was humid. I was back in shorts and a simple T. The rain had since moved out, but the warm front that had pushed it through made everything muggy. Little droplets of water hung in the air like a fine mist. You almost would have thought it was raining if you hadn't known better. I started out my run at my endurance pace. I skipped the normal warm up cycle and went straight for R8/W1. This got me all the way on the other side of Mount Doom before I took my walk break on the down slope. I felt really good during my run. On my way back, I noticed something I had felt before. There is this groove that I get into, where I am running about a 9 minute mile pace, and everything just seems to be clicking. My breathing is good. My legs feel good. It's just a pleasant groove to run in. I want to find that groove Sunday. I want to sustain it.

Spent three minutes walking up the long side of Mount Doom. That's the only hill in my neighborhood I have yet to conquer. The gauntlet has been thrown. I dogged out Ass-Kicker (yet again) and then picked it up for my downhill run back to the house, finishing tired, sweaty, and out of breath. I was pretty happy with the pace and distance.

After chewing on this for a while, I've firmly decided that 11 minute miles for my 10K this weekend is a worthy goal. I don't really want to kill myself. I want to enjoy it. However, if along the way, I find that groove I mentioned, well, anything could happen. We will see!

Finish strong!

Wes

ORN: 3.4 miles, 36:11, normal pace, 10:45 miles, R8/W1