"Mom, how was your run?"

My 11-year old, Big G, has taken to asking me this question after every run. Tonight was no exception.

"It was GREAT!" I said smiling, because it was, in fact, GREAT!

"Anything interesting happen?" He's been reading my blog...

He wants to know if I've raced anymore drunken bums or been scared by anymore hoopty car guys.

Not lately.

But being a mom who doesn't like to disappoint, I thought hard for a moment...

"Well, there were these weird ducks..." I said.

"What did they do?"

"It was a male and a female... kind of like a couple... but they seemed to not know each other yet. She was up on a lawn and he was down on the sidewalk. She was looking over her little duck shoulder at him like she was saying, 'whaaaaaaat?' and he was gazing longingly at her. I think it might be mating season," I told him.

"So was it sort of like two teenagers? You know, where the boy wants to ask the girl to the prom... but he's kind of scared? And she's trying to be all cool or something?" He is getting too smart or big for his britches or something.

"Exactly!"

"How long were they there?" he asked.

I had to think. I realized they were there for quite a while...

"At least 4 laps," I replied. "Maybe even 5... that's about a half an hour."

And that was the most exciting thing that happened on my run, except...

That I freakin' smoked it!  Woo hooo! Well, as smoked it as I am able anyway ;-)

After my struggling tempo run on Monday wherein I actually did pretty dang well for me, I was curious as to what would come of tonight's maintenance run. The schedule was telling me to hit 10-minute miles for 70 minutes, and I was ready for it.

I ended up doing 6.3 miles in 60 minutes. My splits for each 0.75-mile lap were remarkably close... yay! The fastest was 7 flat (9:20 pace) and the slowest was 7:13 (9:39 pace) but the others were 7:03, 7:04 or 7:05... even as I can hope for :)  I felt smooth and relaxed and great! My hip started feeling tight about 5 miles in, so I made the executive decision to play it safe and finish up a wee bit early.

I am feeling right on track for my upcoming race. May 15th... 7.46 miles of hilly goodness... the San Francisco Bay to Breakers. The good news is... at this point, I know I can finish it! And there is no bad news. How awesome is that?