Friday - I ran nice and easy with Brett for 85 minutes in the morning. I was pretty tired from the day before so I didn't really have an option on running faster or not! I spent most of the day tidying up the house and packing as Julie and I were heading down to Phoenix for the weekend. I got in a slow 45 minutes in the evening before we left. I was really unmotivated for this run for some reason. Its not something I usually have a problem with but I think it was from being tired. I had dinner before I picked Julie up at her work. I had totally forgotten they had all dressed up and Julie came out dressed as Ziggy Stardust. She looked great but then had to spend the rest of the night dressed up as we stopped by some shops when we got into Phoenix. She likes to dress up at halloween so she was loving the attention. We went to bed fairly early as I was going to have to get up at 5am to get ready for my long run the next morning.

Saturday - The alarm went off at 5am this morning as I had to start the run at 6am. Julie had a wedding dress fitting at 9.30am so we had to be done by 8.30am (she would be driving with my fluids). It took me a little while to get things ready (coffee and bagel) so I didn't end up eating until 5.20am which only left me around 40 minutes to digest and be ready to roll. I didn't think about this until after the run. I felt great from the start which is always good before a 26 mile run. It took me a couple of 6 minute miles to get into the pace but after that I kept the miles all between 5.35 and 5.45. This felt a lot easier than before London so I was really happy with the way things were going. I then hit mile 17 and I started to get a side stitch. I tried to breathe through it and ease it out but it felt like it was pulling on my urinary tract so I had to stop and try stretch and get rid of it. It felt ok after a minute so I continued on only to stop half a mile later with a sharp pain. I jumped down into a ditch to see if I needed to pee but it wasn't that so I climbed back up to the road. As I did this I stood on a stick that had thorns on it and one went through my shoe and into the ball of my foot. I yelped and then plucked it out of the shoe and checked my foot to see if it was bleeding. It was but it wasn't bad so I painfully started to run again. I got about another 1000m down the road before stopping again. This went on for another few miles and then I thought I had it fixed. It kicked back in and Julie looked quite shocked when I stopped and started swearing and kicking a bush with frustration. She got out of the car and tried to calm me down a bit (she's good at doing that) before I tried again. I lasted one more mile and then called it a day at 20 miles. I ran it in 1.54.30 which was 5 minutes quicker through that point when I did this run before London (of course I lasted until 26 miles that day). The faster pace felt a lot easier this time so I took away some positives from the run but was still a little miffed that I didn't get the 26 miles done. I could only figure that it had something to do with eating so close to the run.

Julie was a way for most of the day so I had a nap and then went around some shops before coming back to the house and waiting for Julie to be done as we had planned to go to the mall. She eventually got back we headed down the road with her mum to spend some gift cards I had been given for my birthday. After a couple of hours of satisfying shopping, we headed back and I headed out to do a 40 minute jog to ease my legs out. I felt tired to start but fine after a few miles. I came home to find that Julie and her parents were doing blind tests of the wines we have a choice of for the wedding so I showered and then joined in the fun. We had a big dinner of steak and vegetables and then started to watch Iron Man 2 but I ended up falling asleep right away and then headed up to bed to pass out for the night.

Sunday - Today was a lazy day. We slept in until 8.30am, which felt great, and then started to write out the table plans for the wedding. Before I knew it I had to head out for my run as I wanted to get an hour in before we headed to church. I felt pretty good but still kept the pace pretty slow as it was just a recovery day. The weather was perfect so that made the run pretty enjoyable. I got back at 11am so had to very quickly shower and change and make a smoothie before getting to church. After the service we had a meeting with the music and wedding coordinators to go over some wedding day stuff. I wouldn't have minded if I had managed to get some food before we left but I didn't so my mind started to wonder as I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible to eat. We got back to the house around 2pm and I just started to stuff as much food into my mouth as possible. A chicken breast sandwich, salad, yoghurt, and a lean pocket I was thoroughly full and ready to pass out. Unfortunately Julie wanted to get up the road to Flagstaff so we could carve some pumpkins and see some trick or treaters. Once we got back to the house, I got changed to go for a run but once I was out the door I started to feel pretty bad and managed one mile before having to stop and walk back to the house. I don't know what was up with me but I have to listen to my body when I am in hard training.

Monday - I had a fartlek scheduled for the morning and I thought Fasil would have been there to do it with me but he ended up staying at home so I did a 5 mile warm up and then changed my shoes to do 12*1 min hard/1 min easy. I felt awful warming up and for my first rep but after that I started to feel good. It got windier and windier as the morning went on and I felt bad for everyone who was doing mile repeats on the loop I was running on. I actually jumped into their workout to help take the wind for them on the windy straight as I know how frustrating that can be. On the guys last rep, I ran the whole straight (around 700m) and I was actually all out to try and stay in front of them and take the wind. I can't imagine how tough it was for them. Quite a few people dropped out of the workout so that just goes to show how demoralising it was for them. I came home and had a good nap before heading out the door again for a 9 mile run as I had a massage with Dana at 3.30pm. The massage was, again, just what I needed and I was able to come home and start getting dinner ready for when Julie would get back.