Today was a pretty awesome (dare I say perfect?) day! Not only was my run great (more on that later), but my garmin started working (!!!!!!) and every other aspect of the day was just great. Lets starts at the beginning shall we??
I woke up to my alarm at 4am. Yes, 4am. We had to be at the Fellows' guest house by 5 and my taxi driver needed me to call him to wake him up at 4 or else there was no hope of him getting to our office in time. Just add personal alarm clock to the list of my job responsibilities!
Kathryn, Brianan, Hudson, Ben and I arrived at the Fellows' guest house right in time to see them off for their 5am departure. I can't believe that the Summer Fellowship Program is already over. These 3 weeks FLEW by! These Fellows were such an awesome group!
The 2012 Summer Fellows, Fellowship Leaders and some of their translators, right before they boarded the bus to Accra (Just in case you thought I was kidding about the whole up at 4am thing...)
As sad as it is to see this amazing group of Fellows go, there is always a big sigh of relief at the end of every Fellowship Program. There is A LOT of pressure and responsibility when you are in charge of a group of 23 young people in a foreign country, especially when that country is in Africa and the majority of the Fellows have not traveled anywhere in the developing world before! I work for 3 weeks straight without a single day, morning, afternoon or evening off. Even though I have 2 Fellowship Leaders, who actually do most of the day to day work, at the end of the day, the Fellows and their well-being is my responsibility. Ah! The Fellowship Leaders live in the office with me, so even when I'm at home, I still have to be "on." Don't get me wrong - I love my job and think its pretty much the coolest job on the planet. But whenever that big bus full of Fellows pulls out of the Tamale station, a little mini celebration begins. "Yes! They are all still alive! Yes! No one got Malaria!"
The CWS Fellowship Leaders and the CWS-Ghana Staff, bright and early this morning! L-R: Hudson, Me, Ben, Brianan and Kathryn.
After the bus left, Kathryn, Brianan and I headed back to the office and when straight back to sleep. It started to rain a few hours later and it. was. heavenly. The sound of rain on a tin roof is so peaceful, and we had absolutely nothing that we needed to do besides sleep! I didn't wake up again until 12:30pm - it was magical!
When I woke up, James, the boy who helps out around the house was already here and had already started cleaning! What a wonderful thing to wake up to! Sharing the house with 4 other people (2 of them being boys in their early 20s), has been interesting. Now its just us girls left and the office is sparkling. Thank you James!
Since it had rained all morning the weather was nice and cool in the afternoon so I set out for my run around 3pm. As you know, I had my first "track" workout planned for today. The plan was mile repeats. Like I have mentioned before, I am following Jeff Galloway's marathon training program. With this program, I take a 1 minute walk break for every 4 minutes of running. The hardest part about this program, for me, has been figuring out how much the walk breaks slow me down and then calculating how fast I need to be running during the run intervals to make my goal time. Mile repeats help with this and help your body get used to running at/around your Marathon Goal Pace (MGP).
The goal of Galloway's mile-repeat workout is to run each mile 20 seconds faster than your MGP. You run for the whole mile without any walk breaks. Then you walk for a quarter mile to rest and start again. This was my first scheduled mile-repeat day, so I only had to do 4 repeats (by the end of the program I'll be doing 14!)
The whole run was awesome! I started with a 1.25 mile warm up jog. I wore my garmin but per usual, it wasn't really working. I was okay with that though and had a good loop that would work for my mile repeats.
Since I want to run faster than a 4:30 marathon, my MGP is 10:19. So, I was supposed to run each of my mile repeats around 9:59. About 3 minutes into my first mile, I checked my garmin and noticed that my pace said 9:07. Hmm....since I've been in Ghana my garmin has never had showed a faster than 20 min/mile - pace. This seemed pretty accurate! Turns out, it was accurate and my garmin continued to work for the rest of this run!! Fingers crossed its fixed for good! What a GREAT DAY! I continued to go too fast for that first mile, despite my efforts to slow down a little and finished it in 9:18.
Yes garmin! That IS where I ran! Right on that road, exactly like that! Welcome back!!
I managed to slow myself down for the next three miles, but I still was running a little bit too fast and hung right around a 9:45 pace for each mile. I had re-started my watch after the first mile to see if it would keep working - and it did! Too good to be true! Since it kept working I was able to have real splits again. Yay!
This run was such a HUGE confidence builder. I have felt so slow on most of my runs here in Ghana, it was awesome that I had to SLOW myself down to stay around my MGP. My legs felt great the whole time, and this run was just plain fun! I know that the cool weather and the fact that I had just slept all morning probably had a lot to do with that. But I'll take it!
"Cool" weather in Ghana does not mean that you still don't end up covered in sweat...
After my run I got a call from the Fellowship Leaders who told me that they had all arrived in Accra safe and sound. Kathryn, Brianan and I checked out a new spot for dinner and had delicious Indian food to celebrate the end of another successful program! It was the perfect ending to a perfect Sunday.
Oh yea...I also got to hold a baby monkey this morning. N.B.D.
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