runnin' with the devil

just kidding! i wasn't running with the devil; we don't get along all that well. actually I was running with an angel...a Tri-Angel to be exact! Meet Heidi (aka: Tri-Angel), my guest running partner for my long run on friday. CLICK HERE to visit her awesome blog. she is one of the first blogs i started following when i first started mine back at the end of december. i highly recommend her blog as she is highly entertaining and does some really neat events in New Orleans where she has set up shop for a while. better yet, here are her own words from her blog profile:

Runner turned triathlete, future Doctor of Physical Therapy, and spinning instructor. Lover of snowboarding, surfing, yoga, cosmos, hot pink, and can't forget my hottie aviator and mini-wieners! Join me in my venture as I haphazardly juggle life and this crazy Ironman training. I thank God every day I am able to participate in this great sport we call triathlon!

as luck would have it for me, heidi was in town to visit her hub's family so we hatched a plan to meet up for whatever training we could coordinate. it just so happened we both needed to get our long run in for the week so that was the plan for friday morning. heidi also happens to be training for her first IM race...IM Florida on November 6th so we are about 2 weeks apart in our training, which worked out very nicely. thankfully she is a super early bird like me so there was no twisting her arm to meet me at 5:30am. my long run was 15 miles and hers was about 12.5 so i ended up doing the last couple of miles solo and that was the hardest of all the miles but i was just so tickled to have someone who could run my pace and yack the entire time with me. we never ran out of things to talk about either...blogging, blog guilt (not having enough time to blog or comment on other blogs), our part time jobs of training for a 140.6 mile race, our training philosophies, the cool bloggers we already follow and recommending blogs to each other that we should be reading. this blog world of ours is incredible...nuf said. love you all!

the coolest part about having a guest athlete with me is that i get to show them all the beauty i get to experience on a daily basis whether running or biking...not swimming because the pool is not a thing of beauty to me, only a thing of necessity. so without further ado, some pics of the last part of our run. some of these will look familiar to my elder followers when i did a picture post way back when after one of my afternoon runs.

fire road heading into the park

smooth pavement after the fire road heading to another off road trail

the water station with cold water to drench ourselves in

another beautiful fire road we ran on

beautiful pond we passed on our way to and from the park

as much as i love running alone, it is a lot of fun running with a friend or two. i will say this, good running (and cycling) friends are very hard to come by.

after we finished our hard work for the day, we came back to my crib and let the flip cam roll while we goofed off in the back patio area. here are a few more of our pics:

in other training news...had an awesome weekend of riding. 93 miles in the hills yesterday with a heat index of 109! today we did a flat 50 and i am starting to feel like i've turned a corner in my training....the only way i know how to describe it is that when the heat gets turned on high and the mileage is high, and i've been at it for hours, i still feel very strong. i know you all know what i'm talking about, right? it's just a really good feeling. you know you're doing something right.

some more fun news...i signed up to do this: Ragnar Relay. according to the website description, it is 12 runners, 2 vans, 24 hours, 200 mile(ish) relay race where you run, drive, sleep, repeat. i think it will be a perfect event following the 140.6 Great Floridian race on October 23rd. i'm very aware of the post race blues so this will be my way of heading it off before it can set in. here is a great description of the florida central ragnar relay i will be doing from November 19th thru the 20th:

This 191 mile adventure-fest will push you and 11 pals from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. Starting in Clearwater and finishing in Daytona Beach this relay offers runners a unique opportunity to run across the state of Florida as it passes through the shoreline towns of Palm Harbor, Tarpon Springs, New Port Richey, and the horse country of the Ocala National Forest. The race (and your stamina) wraps up within earshot of the roaring engines of the Daytona 500 and the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

our team is sponsored by Feet First a very cool running store in Tampa and St. Pete. they have been around for over 20 years and know their stuff. so has anyone else out there done one of these ragnar relays? if so, please give me some details.

i think that's all i've got for now. congrats to Kevin at Ironman by thirty and to Matt at Staying Strong and Positive and his bride, Heather O who did their first 70.3 -Whirlpool IM 70.3 Steelhead yesterday. i know many others raced some sprint distances this weekend and i'm making my way to your blogs to catch up.

much love and PEACE OUT!