And just like 16 days have passed. For the first time, I feel like I need more time. Mostly because I feel like I accomplished next to nothing. Unless there are awards given for the number of Hallmark movies watched. 😛
In fact, since I was still sick most of this week, let’s bullet-ize this recap for expediency. Is that a word? Bullet-ize? Oh well, I’m using it anyways.
I slept… a lot.
Watched all the Hallmark Christmas movies…and Lifetime ones too.
I coughed a lot.
Finished all 11 seasons of Bones. Ok, I did start this in the summer but still.
Watched all second season of Fuller House.
Still not a huge fan of food, well, sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not.
Rode the stationary bike once for a slow 6.5 miles.
Watched Battleship for the 100th time. It’s my stress movie. More on that below.
Had my office Christmas party on Friday evening. Filet Mignon, yum.
I managed a little bit of yoga to try and loosen up. Ha!
Saw RogueOne on Thursday!!!!!!
I had an MRI on Friday and I freaked the frak out. Like full on panic attack freak out.
Went for one really short run on Saturday. Man that was hard! My legs were so confused.
Finished most of my Christmas shopping on Sunday. I think. I feel like I bought nothing. 😢
So, yeah, a stellar week of vacation. This didn’t serve to improve my opinion of vacations any. Waking on Tuesday to the news that the company I work for is being sold was also not something I was expecting. My boss texted me but even knowing, seeing the headline was not something I was prepared for. The next few months will be interesting. I’m going to put a smile on my face and do my best to be positive. Fingers crossed.
2.5 miles was all I ran this week but that’s 2.5 miles more than last week. That said, I can see I’m not going to be running any double digit long runs any time soon. Which means Carlsbad in January might not be the best idea. Boo. Good thing I haven’t registered for it yet! I’m not closing the door on it yet, but I think the smart thing would be to not run it.
By the time you read this, I will be one shift away from 16 days off. 16, people. 16. Ordinarily I would say I was afraid I was going to lose my mind but it’s been a long year. This may be a vacation I can handle. I know I need a few days with no alarms or deadlines.
It may only be December 2 but I have been watching non stop Christmas movies for weeks. I can’t stop!! They are so cheesy and I love it! Now if only I could figure out what to do on the Christmas gift front.
Does anyone else get cold feet? I mean literally. My toes are frozen all the time! I need thicker socks!
I made it out for my second night run! Made it 3 miles this time. It ended up being a very slow progression. 😛 Man our sidewalks are uneven. I was bundled up in tights, tank, long sleeves, my Buff®, a beanie, gloves, reflective vest, and a flashlight. A woman passed me at one point; she was wearing shorts and a dark sweatshirt. One of these things is not like the other.
Starting next year, work won’t be open on Saturdays anymore, well for the most part. While kind of awesome, it’s also odd. Don’t get me wrong, I may miss the occasional odd half day but I won’t miss working Saturdays. Or the trek to that location.
Speaking of that night run, sorry to everyone I blinded with the strobe light on my flash light. Apparently this blonde can’t operate a flashlight properly. 😛
Also, WordPress has recently dumped a lot of the blogs I follow so I’m hunting you all down again. So if you get another follow from me again, hi!
16 days. I keep coming back to that. How long until the boredom posts start coming?
I wish I could I could be all sunshine and daisy’s about last week but I can’t. I am looking really hard for the shiny because I know it’s there somewhere. It has to be.
Work has been stressful, we are still down an employee and haven’t been able to replace them yet. Also, the shift back to being an hourly employee is affecting me more than I thought it would but I’ll keep trucking along.
My sleep is still crap. I used to be the type person who while being a night owl, once asleep I was dead to the world. Seriously, you could throw things at me and I would sleep through it. I would fall asleep in one position and stay that way all night. Lately I can’t fall asleep and when I do I wake up repeatedly and I toss and turn. Toss and turn to the point that my quilt and top sheet are usually on the floor in the morning. 😞 This weekend I went shopping for new pillows and I’ve ordered some essential oils to see if they help. Fingers crossed!
Loss. I was somehow lucky enough to get this far in life without having to deal with loss often. This year has been different and last week was more bad news. I really need to work on being less of stress eater.
Monday- 2 miles This was supposed to be a rest day but with all weekend off due to my stupid leg, I wanted get in a few test miles. We got out of work late so by the time I made to home town I was racing the dying daylight. 2 miles is what I was able to fit in. I was a little achy but nothing hurt more than that.
Tuesday- Rest. Something came up and I didn’t get off work until almost 7. I didn’t even attempt to run that day.
Wednesday- Rest 2 days off in a row seemed like a good idea. Plus it fit perfectly in my training plan from Ekiden Coaching. 😛
Thursday- 3.5 miles Another chance to test the leg and see if I would be racing this weekend. The plan called for 5 x400 but I knew I wasn’t getting up to 5k pace. I stuck to the 400’s but kept them around a 9:30 pace and walked the recoveries. My calves were super tight per usual and I stopped at one point to completely re-lace both Hoka’s but other than that it was ok. I realized that I will be on the treadmill much sooner than I would like though. It is getting dark so fast!
Friday- Rough day. But I did win my entry in City to Sea from a Facebook contest so there’s that right?! Thank you to everyone I badgered into voting for me! I registered for Sunday’s race on Friday morning.
Saturday- Rest day. Went to SLO for packet pickup and wandered around doing some shopping. Shopping and food make great distractions from life right? The race shirt was tiny, like Stitch size tiny.
Sunday- City to the Sea 13.1 To be continued…😛 How was your week?
Week 12 was pretty good so of course this week started off rocky. One of these days the pendulum won’t swing back and forth so quickly. The whole week was wonky actually. It started odd, swung into worse and then swung back again.
Monday- Rest I had planned on riding the bike but as I was leaving work I started getting texts from my brother. He wanted to know where my dad was. Odd but ok, so I called my dad. No answer. Hmm. I called my mom, no answer. That’s odd. Now my mind goes to worst case scenarios and starts thinking that something happened. Turns out my brother’s truck had broken down in the Subway parking lot. As for my parents not answering- well, they have lives. 😛 But eventually, I picked up my mom and we ended up eating Subway for dinner while waiting for AAA to tow my brother’s truck.
Tuesday- 3.5 miles– With my brother’s truck out of commission, he needed a ride to work. His current job has him working in SLO. Not in the town I work or the town we live in. Well that makes the commuting a little tricky. It’s sad how much getting up 30 minutes earlier kicked my butt. I had running gear packed but wasn’t optimistic about getting in a run. It ended up working out, I only had to take my brother halfway and he found another ride home.
I headed to the lake path to get in a few laps. Ouch, Ouch, ouch. My calves and shins were soooo tight. I hoped they would loosen up after the first lap but no such luck. I stopped multiple times to stretch during lap 2 but it didn’t help. Lap 3 probably shouldn’t have happened but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being a big baby. It still hurt, so I called it at 3.5 miles.
Wednesday- Rest-Another earlier than normal morning and time I did take my brother all the way to SLO. That led me on a roundabout way to work but bonus- I found a new road to run on!! You know you’re a runner when you drive new roads and notice how run-able the shoulders are. I mapped it and I can run from my work location to another one and it’s around 14.5 miles. Woo hoo! Just have to figure out how to get back. 😛
Thursday- 7.5 miles– As I mentioned in Friday’s post, this run sucked. Pain, tightness, clothing issues, asthma issues, body insecurities; you name it, I had it and the run blew. I was hoping to pull off 12 but called it at 7.5. My brother took the family to pizza to thank us for the week. 🍕 Then I came home and vented about the run on the blog. I also had the beginnings of a headache so I went to bed early with an ice pack on my head. I emoji’d myself- normal right?
Friday- Rest– Like all Fridays. 😀My headache had turned into a migraine. I tried drinking tons of water, caffeine, food, sugar, etc to help it but nothing worked. I even took 2 Excedrin Tension Headache pills. That was probably a mistake. I tend to have odd reactions to OTC medicines. Yeah, my pupils decided they wanted to be different sizes. I ended up going home an hour early.
Saturday- Rest– I worked in the morning and it was chaos. That seems to be the new theme for the Saturdays I work. Can it stop? Part of me wanted to run in the afternoon but I was considering another long run attempt on Sunday. I don’t usually follow the 10% rule but since 2 weeks ago saw 4.5 miles and last week 17, I decided to be smart.
Sunday -10 miles run, 3 mile walk– Holy crap people!!!! After the crappiness of this week’s runs I was not optimistic for this attempt. When my alarm went off and I saw 88% humidity for the weather, I hit snooze. I thought about blowing it off entirely, but an hour later I was heading out the door. I had zero goals for this run, I turned my watch face to the clock and then ignored it. My mother, brother and I were doing lunch so she was picking me up at the end. Erring on the side of caution, I told her to give me 2 hours. longest run in the new shoes
I didn’t worry about keeping my pace slow, I didn’t worry about being fast. I ran what felt comfortable and walked when I needed to. Per usual, I picked up my pace running across the bridge, it was the only time I really felt fatigued. I kept running and was soon off road on the river path. Which turned into a running hopping dance. The path was full of stink bugs! Half a mile of watching my feet and hopping over them when needed- that added some excitement to the morning. Then it was up the hill for the river route and back down. The humidity never broke and it was still around 78% at the end of my run. I felt like a sticky, nasty mess but my lungs held up pretty well. I finished down on the river trail again and stretched out.
Then I saw my watch- 10 miles at 10:27 average pace? Where the hell did that come from? I didn’t think I had seen that pace for a long run since last year’s training for SLO. Hours later and I am still not sure how I pulled that off. And I had time to stretch and walk it out before I met my mother.
When I uploaded my figures into Smash Run later, I realized just rare this run was. I thought it had been the fastest in a year, umm, it was my fastest 10 miler since January 2014. What?!?! I’m still not sure how it happened but I will take it!
My mile splits make me laugh- typical me, all over the place. But I felt good so I’m just going to call it a win.
This week was all over the place- work, life and running included. I feel like I need another day to recover. Boo. Oh well, moving on. My hope this week is to stay consistent and pull off a new to me distance this weekend. Fingers crossed!!!!
Low-carb– umm, yeah, I had Subway 4 times this week. It just kept happening! It was easy and not horrible for you. Ugh, well, Monday is a new week right?
Upcoming Races- Wine Country 13.1??
SLO Marathon 13.1
Focus– Keep it slow and steady but solid.
The lament of runners all over- Easy is hard! Grr. I’ve been thinking a lot about pace. It’s part of that insecurities post I’ve been sitting on for a while. But in short, I’ve been thinking about how I ran better when I didn’t care about my pace as much. 98% of my runs were also “easy” runs. So, I’ve been revisiting 80/20. I bought it about a year ago but really just skimmed it. With my lungs being what they are lately, I figured this would be a good time to read it again. Plus, running slower is fun when it’s the plan. 😀 But still hard.
Monday- Rest I really love Monday rest days. I really do.
Tuesday- Rest I usually run on Tuesdays and that was the plan. Work was insane that afternoon and ran late. By the time I would have changed and gotten out the door I would have only had time for about a mile before the sunset. I took it as a sign that I should just head home and get to the pharmacy for my new medications before it closed. Since I’m still only running 3x a week right now, I figured I had plenty of time to make up my run. Plus I was able to take part in my first Twitter chat. Damn that moves fast!
Wednesday- Rest Spanish tutoring. Or I tried. My mother volunteered me to help one of her tennis players. Except that the days of me being fluent have long since lapsed. Conjugating my verbs is not something I do anymore. But I tried…and since we met at the pizza place, I still had my Wednesday pizza night.
Thursday- 3.91 miles I headed out after work for a few miles. El Nino has been threatening to drop some heavy storms in the area so I knew the humidity level was up. A heavy marine layer was rolling in and I knew this run was going to be a struggle breathing-wise. It was but I just slowed down and tried to keep my breathing under control. It was rough but there was an amazing sunset so it all evens out right? I hit 3.9 miles at my car. I was going to run around the block to hit 4 miles but there was a crowd of cops outside the police station so I just called it. Running around the block a few times looks crazy to most people- what would the police think?
Friday – Rest day Something about this week kicked my ass. I was so tired by Friday and the scale pissed me off in the morning. I was waiting for closing time a little more eagerly than usual.
Saturday- Rest This was not the plan. My mom had been wanting to go shopping in SLO so we were going to head down in the AM and I was hoping to get in a few miles later in the day. It was also supposed to pour all day. SLO did happen but running did not. I felt super tired when I woke up but other than that ok. I didn’t realize anything was wrong until my first few words to my mom. I had no voice! I sounded like a squeaky frog! What the?! It continued to get worse throughout the day and I felt off. Like I couldn’t keep my body temp regulated. So I skipped my run. Boo. But I did indulge with some pretty kicks.
Sunday- 8 miles My training plan called for 10-12 miles but I wasn’t even going to try for that. I still had no voice but I felt ok, just tired. I decided to head to the lake path and attempt my long run. Lapping the lake meant I was never even a mile from my car so if I had to bail, I could. I also had my mom and S along for the ride; they were going to walk while I ran. This way I had backup if things went south. The weather was sunny and high 50’s but I wore pants and long sleeves just in case. I tried to keep things easy. I went back to my old method of running at the lake- ran all of the lap except the park. I walked through the park. That way every lap had a built in walk break and it was easier to avoid all the children playing. I felt tired and sore but not bad. I just kept moving. I told myself I would be happy with 6 miles. That put me on the backside of the lake so I figured why not finish out the lap? Then back at the parking lot I could see my mom and S on the backside but they seemed closer so I figured I would keep running until I caught op to them. Yeah, my eyesight must have been off. I didn’t catch up to them until 7.6 miles. Then I figured I may as well just run until I hit 8 miles. So I did. But there was nothing else left in me. Surprisingly though, the run was one of the steadiest paced runs in a long time. Go figure!
I don’t feel any worse right now but I don’t feel better either. Wine Country is 7 days away and I am on the fence about it. It’s one of my favorite races and this would be my 6th year running it. I will just have to see how I feel this week. Hopefully my voice comes back soon, I am tired of sounding like an angry Mickey Mouse. At least according to my mom and S.
Low-carb-– I did damn good last week, I really did. I was so proud of the myself. Then the scale pissed me off on Friday and I let it derail me this weekend. Time to start over on Monday- again.
So it wasn’t the best week but it could have been worse. Right?
Slacker Runner 