With last month’s Golden Harvest 5k race, in which I only ran for fun, yet was super hard because of the humidity, I am back to stepping up my running. Still no half marathons this year planned; it feels kind of weird: people keep asking me if I ran this race or planning on running that race.

Even without the races, I’ve been adding tempo workouts in. For fun. Weird, right? I enjoy running so much that I am intentionally going out for runs to work a little harder. A few weeks ago I ran at the park and my average for 3 miles was 3 seconds slower than goal pace. (The average, I said, haha.)

I also met my friend Janet for a run while she was tapering for the Chicago marathon. I’d like to think that the combined running with me when I’m not actively training for anything and the conversation pace, helps keep her easy runs easy in preparation for her race, hee hee. She kindly went a little further with me, and that became my long run for the week. 🙂

This month I went on two hiking trips. One was over an hour away and became a little day trip. My friends and I hiked 5.65 miles for the day and enjoyed a fancy milkshake afterwards.

The following week my sister and I went hiking at the Saugatuck Dunes State Park. Our 3.2 mile hike ended up being 2 miles, as we had cut in early. We should have kept going south along the beach, but the shoreline had eroded away making it impossible to continue in our desired direction. It was still a great time.

Lake Michigan

This week I went out for another tempo run. I set out to run 3 miles at goal pace. It was so windy outside; my friend and I doubted ourselves and questioned how well this would go. There were gusts at 20mph. But it went great. In fact, I am thrilled. I ended up making it 5 miles, at goal pace, which averaged out to being 8:19, faster than goal pace.

Now, there is just 16 days until my favorite 10k race. 🙂  Do you have any more races left on your schedule?