Who Doesn't Love a Good Deal?

Hey homies! Guess what I figured out today (please don't laugh at me if this is ancient news)? Did you know that Amazon.com can basically substitute for a Sam's Club and/or Costco membership WITHOUT THE MEMBERSHIP FEE (or the need for a car, in my case). Yes, I am just very excited about this. I am especially pumped about the fact that they have a "back to school" promotion going on between July 20 and September 6 where if you purchase eligible grocery items, you can save up to 40% off of them!! Awesome, right? But guess what's awesomer (not a word, I know)? There are lots of runner-y (also not a word) items that count as qualified items! For instance:

-Powergel!
-FRS energy drinks
-about a zillion different kinds of balance bars
-about 2 zillion different kinds of power bars
-lots of healthy, organic products

And just for Spike, I had to point out that there are also about 16 zillion kinds of pop-tarts that count towards the promotion (breakfast of champions, right?)!

So here's the deal. Buy any 2 eligible products and save 20%; Buy any 3 eligible products and save 30%; Buy any 5 eligible products and save 40%. And did I mention that all of the eligible items ALSO qualify for free shipping?! They do! Anyways, you should totally take a look if you are in marathon training and/or have a large-ish family. They have lots of food you probably buy pretty regularly--cereals, pastas, snack foods, drinks, gums, etc.--and it's a decent way to save a little mula (so that you can run more races, obviously). Um, yeah . . . so just go here to shop, and then enter the code BCKSCLO9 at check-out!

Hahaha, can we just say that I am ridiculously excited about the potential of receiving 6 tubs of organic peanut butter and like 60 individual packs of my favorite smart start cereal (not very earth-friendly, but I might actually be on time to work if I ate my cereal in a convenient to-go container) in the mail in a few days. Although I should probably figure out a place to store it all . . . NYC apartments are SO not conducive to bulk grocery shopping . . .

Okay, now on to actual running stuff. I forced myself through a brutal speed work-out last night. I seriously wasn't feeling it, but I gutted my way through a 10 min. warm-up + 2 x 1200m + 4 x 800m + a 10 minute cool down. I completed the workout on the 'mill at the gym because it was humid as f*** out, and also was supposed to storm. I ran all of the intervals at a 7:53 pace (was going to speed up a bit for the 800s, but decided to take it easy on myself, considering I'm a bit out of practice with the speed stuff). All in all, it was a pretty difficult workout . . . kind of kicked my a$$ a little bit. I think I've just been logging so many easy miles since Seattle that I'm a bit rusty when it comes to picking up the pace. Still, I made it through the workout without too much trouble, so I'm pleased. I finally feel like I'm getting back on track with marathon training (whew)!

I'll be trying a recovery run at my ACTUAL prescribed recovery pace tonight (10:44 to 11:14, according to the McMillan calculator). Confession: I've never actually run anything close to recovery pace before. Even when I was logging "recovery" miles throughout the past few weeks, they were WAAAAY faster than that. I'm not sure if I can run that slow, but I'm sure going to try! Looks like I'll be on the dreadmill AGAIN because it is storming . . . AGAIN. Ugh.

Okay, back to work. Just had to share (especially considering it is eerily slow at work today--um, could this be the calm before the storm? Yikes!).