Dilemma...

I've been faced with a dilemma this week, that made me choose between sticking to my training schedule or taking advantage of a beautiful spring day, off work, at Oliver Winery-- aka one of my most favorite places. (See pictures from one of many of our Oliver trips.) Dow is closed on Good Friday (surprising since even banks don't observe that holiday!), so it will officially be my first vacation day of the year. I had planned to do a 10-mile run since that's what I'm due for this week. Friday was my only chance since we are spending Easter weekend up in the Chicago area Saturday morning-Sunday evening.

THEN, I found out some girls from work are going to Oliver Winery that day. They are planning on leaving around 10 or 11am, which wouldn't give me much time to get in a morning run and shower...we all know I'm not a morning person, not even a little bit. (Good thing the mini was bumped to an even earlier start time of 7am this year, huh?!) And running 10 miles after multiple wine tastings, cracking open a bottle, and then picnicing outside in what's forecasted to be 85 degree weather does NOT sound like a good idea to me. That's just asking for major dehydration.

My gut instinct was to turn down the offer. I made a training schedule for a reason...to stick to it! You could say I even backed out of doing my full 9-mile run last weekend, since I broke it into two separate segments. I like to think two of my best qualities are my determination within myself and my follow-through with other people. It irritates me to no end when others don't have these same attributes, so I hold myself to the same standard. Even if nobody else would know that I skipped a run, I would.

When I talked it over in my head, (if it was ANY place besides Oliver, I could have said no), I realized I WOULD regret not hanging out with my newest group of friends and taking full advantage of a BEAUTIFUL vacation day. Would I regret not doing the 10-mile run? Out of sheer principle, yes. But would it negatively affect my training? No, because I hit the 10-mile mark two weeks ago. Is 10 a monumental mile number to me anymore? No. Mind made up :)

To justify my choice, I started brainstorming of ways to squeeze in a decent length run before Friday. I'm limited with time in the evenings as it would start to get dark before I completed the run, plus I'm usually tired from my work day. Then it just so happened that today, I was able to take an hour and a half break since I only was able to take 30-minutes away yesterday. Even though running around the work campus is not an appealing scene to me (boring loops and running into the same people you see day in, day out) I decided to do it. It was 61 degrees and sunny when I took off which made me a little more gung-ho than I was. All in all, I ran just over 8 miles. Not having water breaks started to be a problem again. Around mile 6, I was pretty thirsty and started to have a couple isolated leg cramps. It's never a good sign when you stop dripping sweat and you just feel salty, which was happening too. I listened to my body and knew I could push through to finish my designated laps, and made sure to hydrate right away with water and some FULL sugar apple juice. Within 10 minutes and a good shower, I felt back to normal.

No 10 miles, but still respectable. Definitely the longest I've ever run in the middle of the work day. Call it a compromise?