trial of miles; miles of trials

Rest day in prep for tomorrow: back-to-back games, playing the first and refereeing the second on the line. I also need to start actually building my mileage up-- I think I've done enough consecutive six-mile weeks. I want to slowly pull myself back into a fairly normal running pattern: build to 4-5 days per week running, with one of those days "long," whatever that happens to be (currently I think my long run is like... five miles). So this week I'll have Monday soccer, which I'm counting as a run so I don't stress myself, Thursday run 3, and Friday run 5. I wish I didn't have to squish them together like that but I think it's better than making my long run Sunday, which would put it the day before Monday Night Futbol. Maybe I should swap and do M/W/F? I dunno. I'll contemplate that as I'm reffing tonight.

so, tentatively: tomorrow soccer, tuesday upper body weights, wednesday run three easy, thursday swim, friday yoga and run, saturday sailing, sunday yoga and maybe go for a hike.

Gosh, my life sounds fun.

Crazy!

We didn't have any subs and all our best players were gone, so I had to play Center Mid the entire game (two 40-minute halves). So, at least, I am now aware that I can run for basically an hour and a half. That's good. The second game, when I had to referee, was of course not as much running, but still by the time it was done at 9:30 (kickoff for the first game was at 6), I was pretty beat. I called G and whined at him on the phone a little because I was stretching and it was painful. My knees hurt. My toes hurt. My shins hurt a little but they are not broken! So things are good.

Gave myself 4 miles, trying to be conservative-- I played the whole time, but the games were only 80 minutes and the field was small.

Yo yo, yo-yo yoooogaaaaa (to the tune of "Lola")

Anyway, I'm still sore from Monday, which is nuts. I actually "rested" yesterday, by which I mean I gave into peer pressure and went to Trivia Night and drank margaritas.

On a less failure-ific note, my friend K (of shirtless Barbarian Challenge fame) is helping me quit even my occasional smoking habit. Living in the South, I have a lot of occasional-smoker friends, and I tend to hang out with them on the weekend or in the evening or both, which of course is when occasional smokers will be smoking. But, I have to stop doing that, so K and I set up a system: every time I smoke a cigarette, I have to text her and tell her. Because I am very weak in the face of peer pressure (see above), I tend to just accept when someone offers me a cigarette, because they usually want someone to smoke with. So far this is working pretty well, and I told all my smoker friends that I am doing it, so they'd stop offering. I think it is going to work great!

I think I said I was going to swim tomorrow, but I might run or at least elliptical instead.

Warmed up 1mi @10:00 pace, ran 1.5 @ 9:05 pace, then cooled down walking half a mile.

 Little by little.

PM: Arms workout. Not too much, as I was tired from work and the earlier workout, but did a few sets of pullups/one-armed dumbbell rows and then bench press/tricep extensions. I am a lot weaker than I was in the spring-- I used to be able to do whole sets of 5 pull-ups, but now I have to do sets of 3 and then rest a sec, then two slow negatives. Also, I am down to 20# tricep extensions instead of 30#. goals.

Headed straight to the gym in the morning just to get it out of the way. Three miles.