Sorry y'all.

I know, I've been, like, The. Worst. Blogger. Ever.

That may be a slight exaggeration, but I definitely have been slacking in my blogging duties.

There's a LOT going on right now at my house...  I won't go into the details quite yet, but trust me. 

BIG THINGS.  VERY BIG THINGS!

In other news, I'm running my Ragnar Relay this weekend in the Adirondacks!!!

It's finally here and I feel pretty good, even though I haven't gotten to run much lately.  My knee had been bothering me a ton and I decided to give it a much needed break.  That being said, I'm very hopeful that all the work I did in August will have carried over to some extent and will help me get through this weekend.  Positive thoughts for my knee and my mental health are both greatly appreciated!

And I PROMISE!  That once this weekend is over, I will get back to my regular blogging schedule and start posting more.  And I'll have TONS to talk about and share after this weekend's race!

In the meantime, please feel free to follow me on twitter (@RunBrinksyRun), facebook, pinterest, or instagram.

The runstreak is over.

And despite the fact that it didn't last as long as I had hoped it would, I still feel like it was a good learning experience. 

And I plan on starting another one in the near future.

Ultimately, I have only myself to blame for the streak ending.  Who else would I blame?

Last week, I went to Phoenix to help out with a race.  And it turns out, the work was MUCH harder than I had planned on.  I'll post more about it in my re-cap, but regardless, I HURT.

Didn't get to bed until late Wednesday night.  Woke up early Thursday morning and started working at 7:30 am.  And finished working around 9:30 pm.  And I still hadn't run yet.

And, for the first time since July 27th, I made the decision to NOT RUN.

It had been a long day.  Fourteen hours of work.  In Phoenix, where the temperature had been around 100 degrees.  Despite drinking more water than ever before in my lifetime, I had only had to pee twice.  I may have set records.

I was tired.  I was hungry.  I was sore.  I was sunburned.  I had blisters.

Yepp, that run WASN'T HAPPENING.

And so there it was.  Runstreak over. 

I felt really conflicted, and to be honest, I woke up racked with guilt the next morning.  So I ran the next morning.  It hurt.  It was slow.  But I did it. 

And now, I haven't run since.  I'd been battling a bum knee for a few weeks already, and add in the phsyical exhaustion from the weekend and I knew my body needed the time off. 

I'm glad I gave my body the rest it needed.  My knee feels better than it has all month.  And even though I have Warrior Dash this weekend and Ragnar next weekend, I know that the time off my feet is what my body needed.  (Not necessarily what my MIND needed!  I missed those runs!) 

I'm going to post more later on lessons learned from my runstreak, but for now I just felt I needed to post this and clear the air about it being done.  I feel kind of guilty.  Like I let the internet down.  But I know that I can always start fresh and I'm planning on starting new come October, after I've had some time to recover from my Ragnar ADK race at the end of September. 

So here's to the runstreak, which lasted 47 days. 

Not too shabby.  We'll go for double next time.  :)

Not much to report this week unfortunately.

I'm actually kind of frustrated, because this was my slowest week and also my lowest mileage.

Stupid knee.

It gets better and I think I'm good to go, and then it starts to act up again. 

It has more mood swings than a teenage girl, I swear.

But!  There is still a recap to do.  It's just kinda boring?

Shins.

What did you think I was gonna say?

Anyways, like most people who run, I've had to deal with shin splints.  And since starting the runstreak, I've tried to be extra careful about taking care of this problem area.  Because shin splints, while they may not seem like a huge deal, can seriously sideline some training.  Especially since, if left untreated, they can progress to stress fractures.  So when I started noticing some pain in my shins late last week I knew I had to take care of them right away. 

Not gonna let something stupid like my shins ruin this runstreak.

So what are shin splints and how do I treat them?

So these past couple days have been rough for me.

I'm naturally a pretty stubborn person.  When I make a decision, I stick to it.

You issue me a challenge?  Prepare to watch me meet that challenge and then exceed it.

So sometimes knowing when to say no or when to back off a little bit can be hard for me to do.

So I'm a pretty sociable person.  I've never been accused of being shy.  And as a result, I make friends fairly easily.  And running friends have been no exception.

And I'm not afraid to make plans with someone I've never even met before.  Which is what I did this past Saturday.  A facebook group I'm part of for trail running in West Michigan had a post.  This lady was coming to the area for vacation and was looking for someone to go trail running with her.  I'd been to the trail before, but never for running, so I thought, "Sure.  Why not?"

Apparently, according to one friend, there should have been multiple reasons why not. 

YAY!  IT'S SEPTEMBER!

Ok, now that I've got THAT out of the way...

This past week finished up the month of August and I think I finished pretty strong. 

As you may have already read, I did not reach 100 miles.  Just shy of it though and I did almost 40 miles more than I did the month before.

So I have nothing to be ashamed of. 

AND!  I finished my first month of the runstreak.  WOOT!

There's a build up to this story, so be patient with me... 

So yesterday, I had an enjoyable day planned to hang out with my best friend.  She works second/third shift and only has Tuesdays and Wednesdays off.  We don't get to see each other very often.  And she's moving to Oklahoma very soon, which means I will see her even less.

So since I happened to have yesterday (Wednesday) off, we made plans to spend the whole day hanging out.  And we did.  It was a very relaxing day filled with lunch, and shopping, and movies, and just general girl time.  Lots of laughing, dancing in cars and making horrible Robin Thicke jokes. 

But she didn't leave my house until 10:15pm last night. 

And I still hadn't run.

There's a runstreak at stake here, so run I must.  Oh, the things I do for that runstreak...

Otherwise known as a story about I apparently suck at math.  But more on that later...

So I follow @TheRunnerDad on twitter and he recently posted about the Ultra September Challenge to run 100 miles in the month of September.

Without putting too much thought into, I went ahead and signed myself up.  It seemed like a reasonable goal and something I could achieve.

And once I had signed up, I thought to myself:

"Huh...  I wonder how far I've actually run so far this month?

Ah, it's fall.  Which happens to be one of my favorite times of year, especially here in Michigan.

And not just because I enjoy the crisp, cool temperatures.
Or fresh cider and donuts from local orchards.

It's not even because Michigan is often prettiest at this time of year, when the colors are changing on the trees and everything turns into radiant shades of red and gold.

Fall is one of my favorite seasons because I LOVE FALL SPORTS.

Oh, sure, I love running.

NOW.

But that was not always the case.

I joined track in middle school because all my friends were doing it.  I ran as little as I could possibly get away with.  And I was never very good at it.

What I really loved was cheerleading.  It was, and to some extent still is, my biggest passion.   I cheered all through high school, continued on an All-Star 18+ team afterwards, and coached cheerleading for 10 years before "retiring" from coaching.

And while I was fiercely loyal to competitive cheer, one of my favorite parts of cheering and coaching was getting to watch football.  Football is AMAZING.  I love that stupid game.  It makes no sense.  In high school, when the guys would have pick up games, I was totally in.  Even now, I'm the only girl in my Fantasy Football league. 

I was privileged to get to follow the success of a few high school football programs during my career as a cheerleading coach.  And even beyond that, I enjoy watching college and professional football.

And so as the fall season approaches, one of the things I'm most excited about is the return of cheerleading and football.  I may not have "rest days" during the runstreak, but you can bet your ass that on Saturdays you'll find me rooting on my favorite college team and on Sundays cheering for the guys on my Fantasy Football roster. 

Because we all need some cross training, even if it is just watching football, right? :)