I had promised an update soon and I'm running out of time before I leave for vacation, so here it is:
Today was my first official day in my new department at work. I'm still a Business Analyst, so that part stayed the same. I was initially going to take this whole week off work for vacation, but I figured since I would be around the cities anyways, I might as well try to get up to speed in my new area as quickly as possible. I moved from tabletop to lighting and wall decor, so the businesses are fairly similar from my perspective. I'm actually pretty excited to get back to work and get in the full swing of things next Monday. My attitude is a little surprising, even to me, but I think it really helped to have even the smallest of changes.
As for my vacation, I'm really excited about that, too. It will be the first time that I've taken more than one day off work since I started last September. I'm flying out to Cleveland tomorrow morning, where my parents will pick me up. We're going to the Twins game tomorrow night, so hopefully the weather cooperates. From there, the details aren't totally clear to me. I'm not the greatest of planners, and since my parents did all the work, I'm just going with the flow. I know for sure that we will be driving to Niagra Falls and Toronto, but I'm not sure how long we are staying at any of the stops. The trip finishes (for me) in Detroit, where we'll be going to another Twins game before I fly back on Sunday morning. It's not the most exotic sounding vacation, but I'm still pretty pumped about it!
As far as running, there always seems to be an update. I've only got two confirmed races lined up for the Fall so far. The first one is Saint John's Invite in September, which I hope serves as a good barometer for where I'll be a few weeks later at the TC10 mile, my second race of the season. I ran both races last year, but I feel with the level of training I've been doing, I'll finish considerably better than a year ago. With work, it's been tough to be mentally prepared to do workouts after already putting in a full day. Workouts are my top priority going forward - I need quality. I'm not going to be skipping any of the workouts on my calendar just because I can't focus solely on them, and I'm going to try like hell to make sure they are productive.
Volume will be another focus, but may eventually have to take the back burner. I'm anticipating my highest monthly mileage ever in August, which ideally will be between 525 and 550. The August before my senior year, I ran 499.9 and just to prove it wasn't all about the numbers, I didn't run that extra tenth of a mile. I've already got my biggest long run this month (yesterday, 23 miles) and I'm feeling really strong. Tired, but strong. Hopefully I'll be able to parlay these increased emphases into some better race results, but I'll have to wait to find out.
