Weekend recap

My weekend was delightfully laid back! It looked like this:
School: Just some studying while I watched the track and field championships. I'm so excited to only have one test left!
So, these championships: Obviously I'm loving our steeplechasers, especially our women and their 1-2 finish. And I'm really excited to see Torie Bowie kicking butt and getting better. She gets credit for the 4x100 relay, too. Things I'm not so thrilled about include NBC's egregious ignoring of Paul Chelimo's 5000m bronze - they did not even mention his name until going into commercial break, and here is a man who has served his country twice, both in the U.S. Army and representing us as a runner - and our men's 4x100 relay finish. Silver was weak. And I'm in camp Gatlin-is-a-drug-using-cheat.

Long run splits

Partying: Saturday night was a surprise birthday party for Dave, a member of my running group. His wife did a great job planning his party: for one thing, the "surprise" was that she told him an hour before the party that they were having a huge birthday blowout. So it was nice and easy for the guests. Surprise parties stress me out! And she is also a great cook, so the food was delicious. The only problem was the timing: late nights with wine don't bode well for long runs early the next day.
Running: I really need to get a grip on my weekend running, or really my running schedule altogether. Right now I'm taking either Thursday or Friday off, but I'm doing my more intense strength/weights that day. That's leaving me sore for the weekend, and then I feel obligated to take advantage of the available time on the weekend and run long both Saturday and Sunday. But it's hurting the quality. Saturday I did ten miles, mostly easy, but I threw in two sets of 5xhills, with full recovery after each set. It was brutally hot and humid, and I came home with the kind of drenched exhaustion I'd normally feel after a hard workout. I think I overdid it. Sunday morning I was slightly hungover, dehydrated, tired from Saturday, and sore from Friday, so yes, that long run sucked.
Soon after we started running, our pace starting to drop to the 7-teens and 7:20's. At our first water stop, I told the rest of the group to expect me to be back of them: I just can't - and shouldn't - run my long runs at that pace. I dropped down to 7:40's instead. My overall pace for the 14 miles was 7:46, and I'm fine with that. I generally like my long runs to be a lot faster than many people run them, but no faster than 30 seconds over marathon pace. Seven-forty-five is exactly 30 seconds over my current race pace. Of course, when I got home, I realized that I had clocked a 9:20 first mile, which was in no way accurate: I'd forgotten to stop my watch when I reached our meet-up spot (in reality, I booked it to the park, because I was running late!). So my overall pace was actually off - too fast. Still, an improvement over some of the 7:30 long runs we've logged, although I did miss having company!
Chores: You don't really need to hear about me cleaning my house, do you? No, I didn't think so. But I did repaint some frames for my dining room. I bought these rather beautiful gray frames, which you can see here:

This is actually a watercolor I did for my brother,
but it's the same frame - they were buy one, get one
free, so I bought four. 

But in my dining room, gray didn't work. There were too many dark woods and no other gray. It was too light, and there were too many wood colors happening in one space. So I repainted the frames, and also moved them to the higher shelf on our mantle, and I like it much better.

Now the frames pick up the color of the Japanese screen and
the fireplace - both a brick red color.

And that's about the extent of my artistic endeavors this week. Some weeks I'm just not that creative!
How was your weekend? What are your highs and lows of the championships?