Up all night...

It's been a rough couple of days.  My daughter got sick mid-week and she has been getting progressively worse and then of course my son got the "plague" too.  It's an upper respiratory type thing, croupy sounding cough and congestion.  Natalie seems to be on the mend now but Daniel is not fairing as well.  If tonight is as rough as last night he will be going to the doctor tomorrow.  He goes into horrible coughing fits at night and wakes up crying several times a night.  This is totally NOT normal for my normally heavy sleeper!  The coughs sound like his throat should be bleeding... breaks this mommy's heart! :-/

That being said, there was still a long run to be accomplished on Saturday.  I woke up at 5:15 Saturday so I could shave my legs and get dressed to be at the Y when they opened at 6 am.  The treadmills get surprisingly busy first thing in the morning.  I had everything I needed to have a fantastic run - a movie on my tablet, fuel, water, propel zero, and a comfortable running outfit.  Unfortunately, even with the best of planning sometimes your body just won't give as much as you would like.  I set the treadmill just under 10 minute miles and ran pretty comfortably for the first 3.5 miles.  At 3.5 I took my first walk break, then at 4.12 miles I had to take a bathroom break.  After that it just never got comfortable again.  I ran a large portion of it, but the walk breaks were more frequent than I would have liked.  I got through this run, one promise at a time.. "get to mile 7, then you can walk for a minute," "get to mile 8 and you can walk for a minute" etc...

Note the crooked sweating, has anyone seen this before?!  It's WEIRD and I don't get it! 

My run came in at almost 10.5 minutes per mile.   I am sort of torn about how I feel about that pace.  On one hand its slower than what I was running during my training for my first half marathon and feels SO much harder.  On the other, its actually about the pace the McMillan calculator suggests I should be running for my long training runs.  I guess the frustration is in a slower pace feeling harder.  I am trying to trust in the training, knowing that its recommended to run the slower speeds on your long runs.  I am trying to prevent injury, and from everything I read the biggest thing is to slow down and not push your body too hard. I am hoping that the "hardness" comes from the fact that these runs have been done on a treadmill while my training runs last time were outside.   Either way I am just going to stick with it and do the best I can to get the miles in and see what happens come April and May when I have my first two halves of the year.

I came home feeling sorry for myself, but decided to let it go and plan what was on the menu for dinner... the answer may come as a surprise to many of you who know how much I despise veggies...

Food Photographer, I am not!

Cauliflower Crust Pizza! 

This recipe was SO good and we will definitely be making it again.  We will probably use less cheese in the crust next time.  It was very tasty but we think you could easily reduce the cheese and it would still be as tasty.  Looking forward to trying this with a variety of toppings in the future.  The best part - Natalie ate it!  Typically she won't eat vegetables or pizza with sauce, so the fact that she ate this is nothing short of a miracle!  

Reader Poll:  Does anyone have any experience with how slowing down your training runs affected your time for half marathon distance races?