Born to Run?

Today one of my friends gave me a copy of the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall, along with an iTunes gift card. It's truly one of the most thoughtful gifts I have received in a while and it has made me smile all day thinking about it.

This friend has heard me talk of my "motivational" fears as I go into my long runs. I love running to music, but it's not keeping me going mentally and my mind needs other escape routes to keep me going. As I have mentioned, I am currently training on a treadmill and so I not only have a machine keeping me going, but I also have the benefit of reading the closed captioning on the TVs in front of me, or occasionally glancing down at a magazine that I am using to block the screen displaying time and distance. I have tossed around the idea of downloading books or podcasts to keep my mind active since I would be paying attention to new material and not losing myself in familiar lyrics and tempos. I would love to listen to some of the Dexter books (yes, Showtime's Dexter) or a couple of the Sookie Stackhouse novels (True Blood is based off of these) but I have to admit I have not taken time to see what is really out there in an electronic format. This weekend brings a 6 mile run so I would ideally like to have something to test then. 5 miles went REALLY well last Friday; I wonder how much can be attributed to the fact that I was watching/playing Wheel of Fortune along with the TV for 30 minutes of the run?!? I am still keeping the "1 mile at a time" mentality which is also helping. Anyone else got any tricks out there?

In other news, today was my last day of work for the week but I have a to-do list a mile long to accomplish tomorrow, so I'm not sure if I will try to get my run or errands done first thing. I am thinking "errands" to hopefully avoid some of the traffic that will inevitably increase as the hours tick by tomorrow. Most concerned about getting to the mall (one last thing! everything else is wrapped), the monogram shop and Whole Foods...the bank, dry cleaners, car place and nail salon are all close enough to home not to be affected by traffic. I'll also be moving my long run to Saturday since Christmas is Friday and I really don't see the logistics of getting 6 done then given the visits from out of town company, etc.

Last week, accomplished everything on the schedule, though I'm not sure that driving to Atlanta and attending my aunt's Christmas party counts as "active recovery". My walking/running buddy was out of town last weekend so I traded 4 miles for working at Matt's townhouse for 8(!) hours cleaning and painting and getting it ready for being put on the market (though we have a LOT of work left to do...thanks, previous tenants!)

Here's the breakdown of this week:
Sunday: work on the townhouse, did not get in the usual 4 miles
Monday: 3 miles 11 min/mi pace (1/2 mile warm up/cool down)
Tuesday: rest day
Wednesday: 4 miles moderate pace
Thursday (Christmas Eve): rest or cross train (may go to the gym early and do the bike for 20-30 minutes since I will be inactive the next couple of days)
Friday (Christmas): rest/enjoy holiday festivities
Saturday: 6 miles (long run pace)

It's lower on mileage and activity but I am glad to stay active and to stick to somewhat of a reasonable schedule. Probably some modifications coming next week as well.