Great weekend, great run

Seriously, yesterday was awesome.  Like the kind of awesome where the kids pass out in the car and have to be carried in for bedtime, because they wore themselves out having fun.  And my long run was the beginning of the awesome day.

I set up on Saturday evening for my long run like I always do.  I got my stuff ready and had big plans for the morning.  Went to bed early, hydrated well, ate well all day, psyched myself up.  But I was secretly fearing the distance.  20 miles.  I've never gone into the twenties before, and it was intimidating.  So I slept poorly and dreamed of leg cramps all night.  I think I actually got them at some point, and chugged a ton of water.  Then I got my standard once-every-three-months neck pull when the boy was extra spastic in the bed and made me lay funny.  I woke up that morning late and uncomfortable.  The boy was waking up too.  The weather looked nasty.  I didn't want to run.

I got my whiny ass out of bed and forced myself out the door.  I put on my new hydration pack for a test run, and ran the first 10-mile loop with it.  I like it for the summer heat, but I quickly learned that I just didn't need it yet.  So it was merely extra weight for half my run.  Which is probably a good thing, because I was keeping my tempo even with that big mother on, and it would feel great once I took it off.  I hit up my car for the second part of the run, ate some Sharkies, ditched the bag, and set back out.  Started running negative splits.  Sharkies and later Gu (finally found one I love!!) kicked in and I rocked out to great music.  I sang out loud and kept with the negative splits.  My last mile, I pushed extra hard and dropped a minute off my time!  I ended the run feeling soooo good.  I felt that "runner's high" more than I ever had before, and I knew that I was becoming a distance runner finally.  It was heavenly.

I went home and got cleaned up in quiet while the rest of the family was out and about, and then we got in the car and drove to a really cute zoo.  It's a drive-through zoo with all free roaming animals!  We chose the horse-drawn hayride, where we got lots of stops and animal info from our guide.  The kids fed ostriches, emus, species of goats, buffalo, and even giraffes.  We had to drag them off of the ride at the end, but then we went on to the petting zoo and fed more animals, played at their fun playground, and left happy.  It was such a fun place!

Anticipating the fun ride to come!

Next we headed out to my favorite wing place for a huge post-run, post-fun dinner.  I strangely couldn't eat even a third of my normal amount of wings (my stomach was angry about the run still), but I was able to have more than my normal amount of beer at least.  We also won five, yes FIVE, stuffed animals in the restaurant claw machine!  The kids worshiped us for the rest of the evening, and we came home with two passed out, full, satisfied little kids. 

Now we're going into a week of daddy being gone yet again, so this family day was really great for us.  The kids woke up happy today, and I'm hoping to keep the momentum up for a while so we can get through another long week.  I have to do all of my runs with the jogger (or on the dreadmill) this week, which will also be rough.  Keep your fingers crossed that we can get through it all!  If the week continues as-is, we'll be all good.  I have high hopes!