Running Chick

The weather was looking awesome for Friday, so I took the afternoon off (yay, 35 days of vacation in the bank) to get my 9 miler in.

I actually thought about my nutrition and hydration needs a bit longer than 10 minutes before heading out the door, so I felt confident with one bottle of water, one bottle of water/Gatorade mix and a Gu.

I felt great until around mile 5, then things started to go downhill.  My legs didn’t feel like going anymore, and my brain didn’t feel like convincing them to go. I struggled through the last three miles, doing more walking than running, and when I was running, it was mostly shuffling. I was able to finish running, but I’m pretty sure it was only because my body knew it was all going to be over soon.

This same thing happened on my 8 miler the other week, so I’m pretty sure that’s my body telling me that I’m doing too much too soon. I tend to ignore my body most of the time, but in the spirit of trying new things, this time I decided to cut back a little.

Oh, and not to take credit for this idea all on my own, I was inspired by a few comments from my Facebook friends who, when I mentioned that I ran 8 miles, said (paraphrasing):

“Wow, eight miles already? That’s pretty quick!” and

“Eight miles! What are you training for?”

It occurred to me that I’m NOT TRAINING FOR ANYTHING HELLO and there’s not really any sane reason that I should be pushing myself so soon. It’s not like I’ve been injured for the past 16 months or anything. Duh.

Of course, my crazy insane multiple-times-over Ironman friend said “Good job, keep it up!”.  Yeah, I’m chosing to ignore her.

I’m going to take all of this week off and focus on yoga/pilates/strength training and then pick back up next week, but I’m going  to keep things short and sweet. I’ll keep it at 3-ish during the week and peak at maybe 5-6 on the weekends.

My miles for last week were 13 @ 10:35.