Challenging Week

Wow… less than 1 week to go.

The last week has been a little challenging, I think because of the heat. Rewind to last Saturday: we did a 1/2 marathon at MP effort. Luckily we started at 6:30, because by the last few miles, it was already getting uncomfortably warm. I felt good on the run, and finished in 1:22.10. That’s proabably a little faster than I hope to go through the 1/2 at Grandma’s, but the pace (6:16s) felt pretty effortless.

Sunday we did a medium length run in the Carleton arb. I’ve really started to enjoy running there. It was a nice place to excape to on Sunday because it was another really hot day.

Then Monday. I did just 5 miles, but did it in about 90 degree temps. I remember finishing the run and being pretty wet — that never happens (I don’t sweat much). I felt sick the rest of the day, getting chills randomly and just not feeling right. I hadn’t realized that I had not been drinking a ton over the weekend or Monday before the run. Dumb.

The rest of the week has not been great :(. I’m not sure if it was heat, or I was coming down with something & running simply made it worse, but my workouts suffered. I took Tuesday off (high of 104, gross!), and Wednesday tried to do a tempo workout. I struggled to hit 6:10s. Not good. My legs felt dead and had no spring or strength in them. I decided not to do the second set of tempo work, figuring that I was probably just digging myself into a hole by trying to run hard. The easy run back in wasn’t very pretty, either — I checked the watch afterwards and found some of the miles were at 9 minute pace. That’s when you know something isn’t right.

I took Thursday off, as planned, and Friday went out for another tempo run. 2×12 minutes, and averaged 5:55-6:00. That’s about where I should be. I didn’t feel like I could have brought it down to 5:40-5:45 like I was able to a few weeks ago, but at least it wasn’t as bad as Wednesday.

Today’s run was better as well. 90 minutes, and covered 11.75 miles. I told Nate on the run that I felt like my “spring” was coming back — only about 5-10% back, but coming back nonetheless. If I can have 100% of that “spring” and strength back in my stride for Saturday, it’s going to be a very good day… so seeing it start to come back is fun :).

So, minor set back earlier in the week, but I still have plenty of time to recover & get back to where I was. I’m not too worried about it. If nothing else, it was good — to remind myself that I need to be drinking a lot more, washing my hands a TON (I do NOT want to get sick!!!), sleeping more, etc.

Crazy no carb/carb diet starts tomorrow… not looking forward to it :(.