AND parking garages?

I would like to stress that I am still not a runner. I am a person who forces herself to run 5 times a week in order to raise money and awareness for a good cause. I don't like running. I spend most of the time I am running wishing that I was anywhere else doing anything else. But I am getting through this, and it will feel amazing to cross that finish line in January.

You guys, running is HARD.

I got up just after 5am this morning to head out to the park for this week's long run. I now get up earlier on Saturday mornings than I do during the week to go to work. There is something seriously, seriously wrong with that.

Anyway, at least the weather was nice - it was chilly without really being cold, so weather never really factored into the run for me, and that is the best possible situation with weather. I know it's going to start getting colder, and I need to get some layering clothes, but for now, it's really nice.

We ran a 7 mile loop this morning. We left from the park, ran to the corner of Allen Parkway and Montrose (you can see my apartment from there - so evil!), then turned around and headed back to the park. On the way back, we stopped at the parking garage on Detering and ran 2 parking garages (up and down is about 1/2 a mile).

I guess the run went well. We ran the whole thing without any serious issues. The parking garages were really, really painful, though. I am already flagging at that point in the run, so it seemed mean to have us run garages at that point, but I'm sure it was good for us or something.

My body has definitely started to voice some complaints about the whole running thing. I have a couple of aches that just won't go away and flare a bit when I run, and my knee problem is getting worse. I know it is an IT band issue, so I just bought a strap to wear above my knee and put pressure on the IT band. It arrived this afternoon, and I tried it on - the leftover pain from the run just seemed to go away. I hope that running with the strap will help a lot with the issues. Of course, I also need to be better about stretching it and rolling it on the evil rolling thingy.

My stomach also acted up a bit this morning. I'm hoping it was just something I ate last night coupled with not enough sleep. I guess we'll see.

This week is busy outside of the running thing, so it'll be a pain to get my daily runs in, but I'm sure I'll work something out. They get longer this week. Sigh.