Tuesday I did my warm up and then had programmed 15 intervals of 0:45/1:00. I did it the week before, it's been my regular interval range for the last few runs. Oh my gosh, I thought I was going to die. My training schedule calls for 30 minute runs on Tuesday/Thursday then the longer one on Saturday. Normally I don't count my 10 minutes of warming up & cooling down as a part of those 30 minutes but I did on Tuesday. I was so tired the entire run, I kept looking at my watch to see how much longer there was left on the interval and almost crying when it said I still have 15 seconds to go! How is that possible?! I feel like I just ran a whole mile and it's only been 30 seconds!!! It's okay, it's okay I told myself, I'm sure my muscles were still just sore from my 5 miles on Saturday. I've found this is my excuse every time my legs hurt is that it's from long run. I survived but didn't love how I felt afterwards and just told myself I'd do better on Thursday.
Then there was yesterday, what was supposed to be a rest day. But I'm beginning to enjoy running and find that I have much more energy and patience on the days I run so I thought I'd take a quick jog on the good ole treadmill. Yup, I made it a mile before I called it quits. Honestly though, I think part of the problem was that I was starving before I even started. The other problem was my stupid mentality, I just couldn't get over how tired I was and that it was technically my rest day and that I didn't want to overstress my legs, blah, blah, blah. Yup, just kept piling it on.
Now, onto today. I told myself that I was going to make up for my crappy runs on Tuesday & Wednesday and do 20 intervals not including warm up and cool down. Oh my holy Hannah, that for sure didn't happen. I was doing good, I hit my usual mental block about a mile in but I just couldn't get over it. I was sluggish, my speed was slower then I normally do and I ended up skipping my last 5 running intervals, even before I skipped those I had increased my walking time to two minutes for the previous 3 intervals. Needless to say I was so, so discouraged after my run today.
But I do have a theory; this last week I've been logging my food and trying to watch what I eat. Since I started running I've gained about 9 pounds which I think was due to the fact that I was over compensating for the calories I was burning while running. You know, the "Oh sure, I can have a HUGE bowl of ice cream because I ran this morning!" Haha, joke is on me. I actually think that maybe I didn't get enough to eat yesterday or enough carbs last night at dinner. I'm going to try eating a banana or something before I run to see if that helps. I'm not one to eat breakfast before running so I'll have to see how this goes.
I was scrolling through Facebook earlier today and saw that a friend had posted this quote and it was exactly what I needed to hear today. I may have had a crappy week of training but I'm going to keep going and I KNOW that I'm only going to improve. Happy Running!
