Dog Days Are Over

I woke up this morning wondering where the summer went.  It seems like it was just last week that the temps were in the 90s, my A/C was churning away every day and night, and my upcoming half marathon was months away.  All of a sudden, there's a gentle breeze blowing through the open windows and doors in my condo, the leaves on the huge oak tree that covers my back deck are turning brown, and I'm up to to double-digit mileage in preparation for my race on October 23rd.


My new mini-Gatorade,
with Rocky the Cat...to show
scale, and because he's adorable.



This morning I planned to do an 11-mile run. With the race about a month away, I will probably plan to do 2-3 more long runs (10+ miles) depending on my schedule.  My friend Heather, who is doing her first full marathon in October, told me that the Running Spot training groups were running down Eastern Avenue this morning.  I decided to do the same route at about the same time because that way I'd have some company out there, as well as access to their water stops.  Since I wasn't 100% sure where their exact route went and where their water stops would be, I went ahead and stashed one of my new mini-Gatorades at my turn-around point. I haven't been able to get into the habit of running with anything in my hands, and the sound of swishing liquid as I run drives me bonkers, so I usually just stash a bottle for long runs. I was excited to find these mini-bottles at CVS Pharmacy last night.  They are the perfect size since I just take a couple of swigs of it then toss it.  I was feeling bad about throwing out 3/4 of a bottle of Gatorade every weekend, so this was a great solution.

The run was pretty easy-peasy, although toward the end of the run my face was itching pretty badly from my recent wrinkle cream debacle that still hasn't entirely cleared up and the balls of my feet were sore because I need new running shoes.  One thing that really kept me going this morning though was an entirely new iPod playlist.  I'm loving the new Florence and the Machine song from Eat Pray Love, which was the inspiration for the title of this post.  What was cool was that after Dog Days Are Over, I put my favorite Earth Wind and Fire song... September.

Happy Running everyone!