This has nothing to do with running, but I had a great weekend filled with lots of summery things!

My weekend started on Thursday after work. My first stop was packet pickup for the race on Friday. There was quite a line, but I eventually made it through and was a little late to meet my friend Jessica for margaritas. She moved to Georgia back in January, so it was awesome to see her. We went to my house afterwards so she could play with my cats, then it was off to bed so I could get a few hours sleep before the race.

Friday morning was race day, which I will go into detail on later. The main thing I will say is it is not a good idea to drink margaritas the night before a race in the sun.

Lunch was spent at Jonathan’s parents’ house where they grilled out, and we watched the Germany-France game.

We kind of lazed about for awhile after that, but eventually got up and went for a walk at Moss-Wright park. They were gearing up for their firework festivities that night, and it was fun to see all the activities they had going on. There was a firetruck spewing foam for the kids to play in! I kinda wanted to go back to the apartment to change into my swimsuit and join in!

After we left the park, we ate dinner then headed downtown to find a good spot for the Nashville fireworks show. If you haven’t heard, it was apparently rated the #2 fireworks show in the country. I hadn’t ever seen it before because usually Fourth of July is spent at my parents’ house. If you haven’t seen the video of the drone that got flown into them, here you go (this is 17 out of 27 minutes of the show):

We met up with my friends Lauren and Chris at a bar afterwards to try to avoid traffic. However, when we left there at midnight, there was still probably an hour long line out of the parking garage! We hung out downtown a little longer before finally heading back at 1:30 or so. Zzzzz…

This is blurry, but I bought this dress.

Luckily, I got to sleep in on Saturday! I met up with Jessica again for a little bit of shopping at Opry Mills, then Jonathan and I went to a party at Lauren and Chris’s for our second cookout of the weekend. Lauren had set up a slip ‘n’ slide in their backyard, but it wasn’t working out too well. We finally got the idea to have her lie on an inner tube and have people drag her down the slide. That worked much better. There was also a bonfire. Which means s’mores!! Yay!

I slept in again on Sunday, then went for an hour long run around noon. Luckily, it wasn’t humid, just sunny and hot! When I got back from the park, Jonathan and I hit the pool for the first time this summer. Felt so nice, though I lost two out of three of my toe rings. I scoured the bottom of the pool, but only came up with a bent skull earring.

Overall, it was a nice summer weekend!

When I volunteered at the Dairy Dash in April, I told a lot of the runners to “have fun” after I gave them their bibs. I got more than a few scoffs at this, so I soon changed to saying “good luck” instead. But there has to be some element of fun, right? Why else would we keep doing it?

I was texting with my bestie a few weeks ago about working out. She’s trying to tone up for summer, and we started talking about cardio versus strength work.

Me: I hate all forms of exercise. I am terrible at doing strength work even though I need it. The only reason I have stuck with running is because it strikes the competitive nature in my brain that makes me want to constantly compete with my past self. Like at mile 12 of the half marathon I just did, I was cursing and swearing that I would never do another one. Got home and immediately made a list of five more I want to do so I can better my time.
Her: Yeah I don’t have that problem.
Me: It’s weird. I spend 4-5 hours a week doing something I don’t enjoy all that much just to have a feeling of accomplishment when I finish a race about once a month. Sometimes after a hard workout too but mostly just after races.

So when I came across a Runblogger post entitled, “When does running become fun?” and he talked about competing with himself and the sense of accomplishment, I could relate. I’m still not sure I would call it “fun” though. My inner monologue during a typical run is, “This sucks. How much longer do I have to do this? Does my knee/hip/ankle/calf hurt more than normal?” Then I will inevitably try to get myself to stop being negative and to enjoy the moment, which will last all of about 15 seconds before I start wondering again when I can stop.

Races are different. My thoughts start out with, “Wheee! I’m racing! Keep a good pace! You’re doing great!” and end up with, “Where is the freaking finish line? I might die.” But when I don’t die, I’m very happy. Is that considered “fun”?

As I said in my text above, this also happens sometimes on hard speed workouts. I almost always start out speed work by thinking that I won’t be able to do whatever workout is prescribed for that day. But, in reality, most of the time I can, and it makes me feel great when I accomplish what I didn’t think I could just an hour earlier. Google tells me the definition of fun is “amusing, entertaining, or enjoyable,” and I would definitely consider that feeling enjoyable. So maybe running is fun after all?

All of my runs can’t be races and speed workouts, though. How can I make easy runs fun? The only way I’ve found so far is to do them with other people. The catch to this is that most of the people I tend to run with run a little faster than what I consider “easy” pace, which makes the runs harder but not to the point where I feel any satisfaction at the end. It’s a delicate balance that I’m still trying to figure out.

What makes running fun to you?

Isn’t this cute? I found this on Tuesday on my Timehop from a year ago.

Makes me realize that I am getting better and stronger, even when it feels like I’m not! Now I’ve run that pace for an additional 8 miles and am training to run that pace at a half marathon. (For the curious, my current fastest mile is 8:48, which occurred during the Rockin’ Marathon Relay last September–thanks, gravity! Second fastest is 9:00 from the Fangtastic 5k a few weeks ago.)