weekend camping & running update

This weekend Scott and I went camping at Falls Lake.  If I had taken my camera, I might be able to show you pictures.  Instead, I'll let google image fill in the blanks for you.  We went to the Shin Leaf area:

And we were a short walk from the lake, as well as a hiking trail.

It was lovely.  After a 10 mile run, the best idea ever is to hike 4 miles and then lay on gravel to sleep.  But in all seriousness we had a lot of fun wandering around and enjoying an evening by the campfire.  Until it started raining at 6am and we had to scramble to get all our stuff in the tent and put the rain sleeve on.  Whoops!

In other news, I finally did strength training last week (on Tuesday).  I did squats, lunges, and all sorts of arm exercises.  My pecks were sore for almost two days.  Hooray!  Now if only I could do that at least twice a week.  Step 1: I promise to do it again today, and then aim for a Friday session as well.  In addition to that one strength training session, I did some running:

• 9/12: Speed work on the treadmill - 4 miles in 39:09 overall - 0.5 mi warm, 1.0 mi @ 9:05 0.5 mi jog, 1.0 mi @ :05, and 1.0 mi cool down. 
• 9/13: "Easy" run, 2.57 miles in 26 :05 (avg pace 10:09).  This run was kind of funny in terms of my speed- my first mile was 11:25, my second mile was 10:02, and the last 0.57 was at an 8:07 pace.  Whoa. The first mile and second mile both felt easy, and then when I saw that the second easy mile was a 10:02 mile I thought to myself "let's push it the rest of the way home."  It was nice to feel fast for once!
• 9/15: Long run, 10.16 miles on my own (M was out of town) in 1:49:16 (avg. pace 10:46).  My mile splits were kind of all over the place: 11:57 (up that stupid hill), 11:07, 10:47, 10:56, 10:17, 10:55, 10:59, 10:08, 10:34, 10:16, and a 0.16 nubbin at 8:05. I want them to be in the 10:30-11:20 range I think, so I guess most of them were, but I still felt all over the place.  Oh well.  I was rockin' out - usually I don't listen to music because I'm running with M, but since I was alone I listened to Mumford & Sons - SO GOOD.  Also on the playlist: Florence & the Machine, Eric Hutchinson, and DMB.