Running Log

This past week I've decided to invest in some running things, so this week I'm most likely going to buy a GPS running watch, some real running shorts, and probably some GU so I can test it out on my long runs on Saturdays to see if I would want to use it during the marathon. I've also been reading my marathon book (slowly but surely) and I think this week I'm going to start doing some tempo runs. The past few weeks have been pretty much all long, slow distance, but now I feel pretty comfortable running about ten miles a day, so I'm going to try to add some speed work into my runs. We'll see how it goes. I just need to be careful that I don't over train!

 I also realized this week that because I ride my bike to and from work and to other random places in between, I'm riding my bike about 50 miles a week. I'm not sure if that helps or hinders my marathon training, but that's another added dimension.  

I set out today anticipating to run ten miles, but I did an out and back and I ended up go to far out, so I obviously had to go all the way back, so I ended up running 13. It felt good even though it was three miles more than I wanted to run. I ran at about seven minute pace. 

I was actually kind of sore from my 13 miler yesterday, so I just did an easy run today, but was actually pretty hard because I had a "charlie horse" in my left calf the whole way, and my shoe started cutting into my ankle for some reason and it started bleeding (that's never happened before in these shoes). It was fine though. I'm going to do my first tempo run of the season tomorrow. 

Today I did a pretty difficult trail run with my friend Adam Jenkins, who just got home last week from a mission in Sweden. It was a hard run, with lots of hills, so I called it good at nine miles. 

Today I was literally so tired that I struggled just to keep myself from walking during this run, which warns me again that I could be overtraining and/or not getting enough sleep. This run was terribly slow and hurt a lot, just because I was so exhausted. 

Same story as yesterday with being tired, and I didn't think the run yesterday was worth it, so I took a nap instead but didn't have enough time to go for a run before a date that I had. Luckily, part of our date was to hike the Y, so I did that, and I'm just counting it as two easy miles. 

I set out today with the goal of running seventeen miles, but I don't know exactly what pace I was running. I ended up running for two hours and twenty eight minutes, which is longer than I intended, but I felt pretty good. I struggled for the last twenty minutes or so, but overall it was a really good run. Like I said, I don't know my exact pace, but if I had to guess I would guess that I averaged about a 7:30/mile pace, which would put me at roughly twenty miles for the day. I feel really good about this run and where I am right now in my running schedule.