Yesterday was a long, but productive day.  After a 10 hour work day, I headed home planning on my 6 mile run and then PIZZA.  Okay, I have a problem with eating too much pizza, but I wanted to find a way to eat it and not gorge myself.

First the run!  TJ and I ran together again.  I enjoyed the time running and talking.  The run began rather slow as I was very sore from my hill run the day before.  I still am not taking any Ibuprofen for soreness since it is just muscle soreness and not pain in my hip or back.  So, we began our run and shortly into it I decided to cut it back to 5 miles.  It was getting late and, need I say again, pizza was needing to be bought.

About half way through the run, TJ mentioned he read that it is good to run the last part of an easy run day fast.  This has two benefits.  You get the mileage of an easy run and you get the workout of a tempo run.  Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, new research has shown that running hard, even in short intervals, burn more fat in one hour than 7 hours of regular running.  I had that thought in mind as we began our last mile.  So I picked up the pace (my tempo pace is TJ’s easy run pace).

As we began the final leg of our run home, it began to sprinkle.  Since I run with my phone to track my pace, I thought I should run even faster to beat the rain (rain and iPhones don’t mix well).  As we were a quarter mile from home, TJ asked if I wanted to sprint the last part of our run.  My reply was, “Arn’t we already sprinting?”  He smiled.  So, we got to the last turn before our home and we sprinted.  I don’t know where I found the energy, but I think I ran faster than I ever have.  I had nothing left by the time we hit our street, but I still had to go a little farther to make the 5 miles.

We started the run at an 8:26 pace and ended the last mile at a 7:15 pace.  It was exhausting for me at the end, but very rewarding.

To finish this up quickly, I got home, took a shower and we to Dominos and got our pizza.  This time I listed to my brother Jeff and ordered a cheese pizza for me and stayed away from my favorite (fattening) white sauce pizza. Plus I stopped at 3 pieces rather than my normal 5 or 6.  Now to the amazing part of this story.  Saturday mornings after pizza night I always weigh a pound or two more than Friday.  BUT, this morning I weight a half pound less!!!  In fact I was one tenth of a pound below 180.  Wow, eating pizza and loosing weight.  Who would have thought that was possible!

Life is good.  I am thankful.  Keep running, it really pays off in many ways!!!