Some days, like Wednesday, I’m out there running, nothing is going right, and I find myself thinking, “Why the hell do I put myself through this?”
Some days, like Saturday, I’m out there running, and I think, “Oh yeah, that’s why.”
Weight Check: 169.8 pounds, down 1.8 pounds from last week. Finally, I’m back down under 170. I was on call this week, which normally means a lot of Mountain Dew, but switching some of those to low calorie sodas seemed to help.
| Day | Scheduled | Total Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 4 miles easy | 4.01 |
| Wednesday | 5 miles easy | 5.01 |
| Friday | 3 miles easy | 3.11 |
| Saturday | 5 miles easy | 5.02 |
Total: 17.15 miles
Monday was not a good start to the week. I avoided the rain, although there was some mist, but it was pretty crummy weather. My run wasn’t much better. My legs were still tired from Saturday, and I just couldn’t get going. Also, running in the dark sucks. Stupid time change.
Somehow, Wednesday was even worse. It was cool, but much drier than Monday. My legs weren’t tired or sore, but they just did not want to move at all. I couldn’t even speed up at the end like I normally do. I had no idea what was going on, but it was really frustrating.
Friday was a slight improvement. The weather was really nice, 51 and partly cloudy, and because I was working from home and only running 3.1 miles, I was able to wait until it was light out. My legs felt OK. I tried to take it easy with a 5 miler scheduled for Saturday. I did stop around at around 1.3 miles to tie my shoe, but otherwise, there were no stops or walk breaks. I still wasn’t quite as fast as I’d like, but it wasn’t a terrible run.
I went out Saturday expecting it to be terrible. The 2nd day of all of my recent back-to-back runs were bad. And I was on call for work, so I knew my run could be interrupted at any minute.
And, well, it was much better than I expected.
I did get a little bit of rain, starting around 2.4 miles, then off and on the rest of the way, but it wasn’t too terrible. The temperature was fine, around 47. My legs felt surprisingly OK, even with Friday’s run. I did slow down a little bit during the second half of the run, but it wasn’t too bad, and I did recover at the very end. Also, I didn’t get paged during my run. (Or after. I got really lucky this weekend.) It was nice to be out there with a smile on my face for a change. Like I said at the top, runs like this remind me of why I do this to myself.
This week, I’m going to try to add in strides and see how my legs handle it. (Before Saturday, I would have had very a different opinion.) I’ve also got a 6 miler scheduled for next Saturday, so that should be interesting. And maybe I’ll finally finish my wrap-up for 2017.