First, today’s long run. 9 miles in 1:49. Not horrible. I had hoped for a bit faster pace – even for a long run. However, when I got home I heard the weather man describe the current conditions as “oppressively humid.” Not news to me. I am generally a sweaty person however – today was unreal. I was hoping for rain. No luck. I could feel sweat drip off then bottom of my shirt and hitting my knees. GROSS. In the last mile I thought there was something wrong with my toes. I turned off my ipod and could literally HEAR the squishing of my feet with each step. Like running on wet sponges. Blech. Anyway, I felt really really good for the whole run. So it’s a win – and knowing that it will be roughly 30 degrees cooler on race day is awesome haha.
On to the problem with august.
August has to be my least favorite month so far this year (except maybe April, but it’s a toss up). It was a super stressful month, and everything’s suffered as a result. At first, stress (mostly work related) was worked out with a good run- or at least temporarily. I started running more in the afternoon, after work, as stress relief. However, the last two or so weeks stress started messing with my sleep pretty seriously. Which, if you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, you know it’s simply the worst. So now I’m exhausted on a daily basis, and running is becoming a stressor instead of stress relief. I’m so tired, runs are sucky, and then I get all worried about cutting back as I’m training. Annoying
This week I finally forced an unscheduled rest day as I knew speed work was not going to help. Unfortunately, I did not sleep any better that night. So the next day (this past thursday) I “manned up” and did my speed work after work. It wasn’t the best speed work I’ve ever done, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. And I did it. 8x400. And it did wipe me out and I finally slept. woo! that was short lived, but whatever, one night of sleep in a terrible sleeping rut is better than 0.
Friday night I spent chatting and wine drinking with a friend. She is a good source of running knowledge and encouragement. Recently she’s gone head first into the cross fit experience. Honestly, I think cross fit is pretty cool. The workouts seem interesting and challenging. My biggest problem is the cost – so not in my budget. My friend is also all into the paleo diet. And is living proof of it’s benefits. I’m not totally sold on all of it, but obviously my diet can use some cleaning up (like, seriously). Again, stress does not help with that. As we chatted about working out and eating right I finally admitted that my problem isn’t that I don’t know how to eat well, I just simply don’t. there are a million excuses, and blah blah, but honestly I just need to admit to myself that I’m my own biggest obstacle here and get on with doing this right.
I’m hoping to try to get back to where I was a few months ago (may/june). I was much more positive, and in tune with being a healthy happy person. I just wish I could let some things go, and stop being so stressed and negative about some stuff (which then turns into all stuff). Not totally sure how to do that, exactly, but I know that there are things that help on that path, that’ve worked before, that I’m not doing as much (blogging) or loosing perspective on (running).
So here’s to deeper breathing, not being a bad blogger, and running for me – instead of for the race. cheers.
2 comments:
I liked this post. Very honest. Last time I was training I found myself running for the race and not for myself, once I got over that I felt much better about things.
I've also considered cross fit but definitely cannot afford it. Maybe someday they'll make a poor personson discount for it!
Great job on your 9 miler! I'm sorry things have been so stressful...I hear ya, insomnia is the worst.
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