Squeezing Out Every Bit of Summer

When my kids were little, we would celebrate the summer solstice (aka: the longest day of the year) by spending all night at the pool as we anxiously waited for the lights to come on in the water, and then taking a final swim before changing into pj's right there at the swim club and stopping for ice cream on the way home.  It was my way of holding onto every second of light before the days started to get shorter.  Even though there is a lot of summer left, it feels different after that one day.

This is the best night of my entire life

There is something about summer nighttime running that  is magical.  Maybe it is the long shadows, or the smell of  honeysuckle, or the feeling that the day will never end, even as the sun is fading.  I have had several of those runs these past two weeks as we ramped up the Elementary School Challenge into a summer series of just 3 weeks.  4 runs a week, following the same pattern we began last June at our first challenge run.  That is a lot of running and a lot of pretty sights along the way.  We have finished runs just drenched with sweat on  95 degree evenings, as well as slightly damp on an unexpected cool and breezy night.

Each run starts where the previous run finished, so we have made our way from one side of the county to the other, and I am amazed at all the beauty that surrounds me.  As many times as I have driven these same routes, I have not fully appreciated how pretty the farms look at twilight, or how sweet the log cabin is surrounded by wild flowers.

The hills are tough to run up, but those views from the top make the trip more than worth it.
Summer should be about exploring, playing, and squeezing every moment out of every day, and that is what I am doing!

Aiming High

I have two huge goals this summer before I start back working full time - one is running related and one is "life" related, although it is really hard to separate the two.  You know, the whole "I live to run, I run to live" equation.  Basically, anything that helps my life must make me a better runner, right?

Usually, organization comes pretty easily to me.  Clearing out, sorting, and throwing things away is not something I generally have trouble with....until it comes to e-mail.  For some bizarre reason, I just can't hit the delete button.  Or the archive button.  Or any other button.  So all my mail is either "old mail" that carries this distinction until AOL has had enough of my hoarding ways and gets rid of it, or it is still in my inbox.  This has become a problem as I tetter very near the 200 threshold.  That just seems unreasonable.

So my plan is to start at the bottom and just  get rid of stuff.   What is really interesting is that when I go out to my mailbox (the real kind, you know, in the dirt, by the street), I have no problem at all standing over the recycling bin and just tossing stuff.  WHY CAN'T I DO THAT WITH DIGITAL MAIL????

My second goal is a direct running goal:  lower my weekly average pace.  It doesn't have to be all Usain Bolt fast, but I have found myself creeping towards comfortable running, rather than that place between "that was awesome" and "I may throw up".  I miss that.

I wanna do this happy dance again

At least for some of my runs.  I have added some more road races into the schedule, thinking that might provide incentive to kick it up a notch, so we'll see how that goes. It'll be tough for sure - this season has been a bugger for allergies and asthma.  Saturday's 18 mile run on the Catoctin Trail was pretty hard, but damn, was it beautiful!

maybe this was why I was wheezing??

Still, I know that I won't get any faster without working on it, so that is the plan, and I have been here before. It sucks and it hurts and it feels so good!  It takes discipline, just like clearing my e-mail.  But at the end of the summer, I am hoping that the results were worth the pain of the struggle.