Great easy run, but now I am just.so.tired....

From the way I am sitting here hardly able to hold my head up at the computer, you would never guess that I ran more than 6½ miles this morning in less than an hour.

Or maybe you would. You might think that I am so drowsy because I am worn out from the run.

But I'm pretty sure it's not the running that's threatening to put me into a coma here. It's the massive serving of wild blackberry cobbler (ala mode, of course) that I ate for (with) lunch today, that is sitting in my stomach and no doubt hogging all the blood that is supposed to be going to my brain and making me alert and smart and stuff. All my body wants to do is digest. And nap, of course.

We had an office lunch at Anthony's Homeport to celebrate Lisa's birthday, which is actually coming up next week*, on the same day as a lot of other people. Before I went over there I spent a bit of time thinking about what I would have for lunch... I always have the citrus salmon salad but I was feeling hungry and so many things sounded good!

I studied the menu and my eyes could not turn away from one thing: wild blackberry cobbler. I love wild blackberries (and tame ones too). I think that wild blackberries are exclusive to the Pacific Northwest, though I may be wrong, they may grow in other places. I'm not talking about the big weedy Himalayan blackberry vines that grow with abandon everywhere—they are big and seedy (and not ripe until the end of the summer) and, while I like them just fine, most people consider them a nuisance (and they are) and you would never find a cobbler made with them on a restaurant menu. Of course there are delicious domesticated blackberry cultivars (I am especially fond of marionberries), but true wild blackberries are rare, hard to find, and prized (and priced) like jewels. There are legends about how to find them, in old burned-out stumps or logged out clearings in the backwoods is one theory, but I have never personally picked wild blackberries or paid $30-some a pound to buy them myself. I have only invested in the occasional piece of wild blackberry pie when I can serendipitously find it on a menu.

Anthony's has a famous blackberry cobbler on its menu but I have always been too full by dessert-time to indulge in it! So today I thought, why don't I just get the cobbler instead?

I was kind of leery of just ordering a dessert without some kind of protein, so at first I thought I would get a shrimp cocktail. Then I switched to a Caesar salad with shrimp (dressing on the side), which was a big pile of romaine lettuce (right up my alley), with only about two ounces of shrimp on it (plus some grated parmesan and some delicious croutons which I was too weak to set aside).**

The romaine and shrimp certainly fit the bill of a healthy lunch, so then it was on to the cobbler! It was a masterpiece. An individual-sized baking dish lined with flaky pastry, filled with a great pile of sweetened blackberries, topped with pastry crust and a nice slab of vanilla ice cream. If I had a working phone*** I could have taken a picture, but this photo looks remarkably like what I got. Except I didn't have quite that much ice cream. I hope. (No, I'm sure I didn't. Unless, of course, the cobbler was just that much bigger proportionately!)

And I now have about 20 calories left in my allotment from the Daily Plate. That's with the 6.5 mile run this morning. However, I mustn't forget that is at a weight loss level, and even if I go over****, that doesn't mean I will gain five pounds overnight. Really.*****

So, about that run this morning.

Monday is "Easy Run" day, which means I can run at whatever pace I feel like doing and not beat myself up over it. Usually Monday follows Long Run Sunday, and I am tired from double digit miles the day before. This weekend, however, I did my long run (11 miles) on Saturday.

Yesterday I "just" hiked up to the summit of Mount Pilchuck, approximately six miles round trip (though my Garmin said about 2.75 each way). Mount Pilchuck used to have a ski resort but that closed years ago and now it is a very popular local hike. Pilchuck is supposed to be an "easy" hike, and I'm sure it is in the spectrum of hiking up a mountain, but it was a bit of work. The first mile, maybe mile and a half is pretty easy, not too steep, and a well marked trail through the woods. Once you get about halfway, though, and certainly the closer you get to the top, it becomes steeper and much rockier—at times, in fact, you are walking and climbing over all-rock surfaces! In the very last bit, to get to the lookout, you truly have to climb up the rocks.

I didn't take many pictures, because all the way up we were (literally) in a cloud that obscured all views, and on the way down it was foggy and misty (even rainy) most of the way. Here's Rod and me at the lookout. Normally you would be able to see something in our background other than grey! At least the fog prevented an attack of acrophobia.

So anyhow, this morning when I woke up, I thought my legs felt tired from the climbing and descending, and had no expectations of a great run. Just a Monday run (where I am thankful to manage a sub-ten-minute pace).

And when I started out my legs were, in fact, typically achy and heavy, but less than half a mile in they started to lighten up, in time to finish the first mile in just over ten minutes. Soon I found myself flirting with a nine-minute pace! (Not entirely consistently, there was back and forth.)

I decided, pursuant to Easy Run rules, just to run as fast or slow as my legs felt like going, and not feel bad about it either way. Today, for a change, my legs felt like going (sorta) fast!

Here are my splits.

1 - 10:05
2 - .42 mile at 8:59
3 - 9:18
4 - 9:04
5 - 9:21
6 - 9:06
7 - 7:53!
8 - .10 mile at 8:38.

6.52 miles, 59:25 total time, 9:07 average pace. (10K time, about 56:48.)


*Lisa telecommutes from Spokane, but she's in the office for the week to fill in while another paralegal is on vacation.
**And a piece of sourdough bread. Because I was hungry and it was hot and delicious. And some peach lemonade mixed with unsweetened iced tea. Because I was thirsty and it sounded like a good idea. And it was very tasty!
**Ironically, my BlackBerry is still having charging issues.
****Which I will, because I certainly don't intend not to eat dinner tonight.
*****And, come to think of it, I had "extra" unconsumed calories on both Saturday and Sunday, so I can probably "borrow" from that....