Motivated to Succeed

4:30 PM - Exhausted last night. Woke up and went straight to work cleaning the house with Emm. We vaccummed out all three cars and cleaned them bumper to bumper (I made $4.47 in change I found under my seat! Woohoo!). Cleaned the dishes, mowed the lawn, cleaned the overhead fans (all 4 of them!), then I emptied the pool and we did a bunch of other stuff. Basically went straight from 8:30am to about 4pm. Emm is still going. I'm going to go make her dinner. 

Well my all too short summer is over, and I start tomorrow bright and early on my first full year of teaching. I am nervous but it is good I know almost everyone there anyways. I won't be able to drive the 2 hours to NY to race the 5k series, so I wanted to do a 5k time trial and see where I'm at. Was pleasantly surprised with my speed.

Ran it all @ 2% incline. Felt strong and wasn't trying too hard. I was breathing hard towards the end. Cooled down with a mile at about 8:30 pace.

Hit the first mile in about 7:03, then second mile in 6:40, and hung on for the third mile. Total time was 21:45, good for  7:00/mi average pace.

Total Time: 30:00 Total Distance: 4.10 miles Average Pace: 7:19

4:45 PM - 90 degrees and head index of 95-97 at the start. Really humid to the point where I was sweating just walking from my car to the track. Didn't run the last two days because I started summer professional development for the 2010-2011 school year on Monday. It's been really hard transitioning back to working all day and waking up at 5:30. So exhausted!

Today I went to the Taconic High School Track. Emm got out at 5:30 today and had said she might need a ride, so I tried to tailor the workout to end around 5:30. She got a ride from her mom so I got home a bit after her. Then she went to a dinner party with high school friends :). She brought a homemade salad made from the first bunches of our own home grown lettuce! I like having a garden, even if it is tiny and in our front yard, haha!

Goal at the track was to do Yasso 800s. I haven't done them ever before, but I wanted to see where I stood endurance wise and I love a challenge, especially in the heat. Yasso says to start with 4 x 800s so I figured anything about that would be good. My goal pace was somewhere around 3:40-3:45 I had thought but I had no idea as I've never done them before.  I found it hard to live up to Yasso's directions though which state that you need to run 400m recovery at about the same pace as you ran the 800m before it. The only way I could accomplish this was literally walking the last 50m or so of the lap and easing into the next loop. If anyone has feedback about that I'd be interested! Overall I was happy with the workout.

Repetition #:	800m Time:	Recovery Distance:	Recovery Time:	Total Average of Yasso 800s.
1	3:25	.28	3:09
2	3:27	.29	3:09
3	3:31	.27	2:56
4	3:20	.28	3:21 (H20 break)
5	3:15	.50	4:20	3:23.6

 Did a 1.02 mile warm-up in 8:29 and then did an additional 1 mile warm-down after the last recovery in 8:42.

GOAL: to add 1-2 Yasso 800s to workout each week and hit 10 @ a solid pace within a month.

Total Time: 51:12 Total Distance: 6.15 miles Average Pace: 8:20

5:00 PM - Gusty winds and temperature in the low 70s. Went jogging on the bike trail from Lulu's on the Lake. I really struggled this week balancing the intensive and draining work schedule and exercise. Sometimes it's just not feasible to do quality training when you have other demands. My dad gave me a good piece of advice. He said:

"Work is a 1. Family is a 10. Everything else works itself out."

Yet as much as I try not to make work a 10, my perfectionist mindset kind of deems that it is. In addition, BArT is among the most demanding of public school teachers in the state and the bar has been set so high by our predecessors.

I wish I could summarize all the professional development I went through this week, but essentially is was 8am-4 or 5pm every night - a whirlwind that was psychologically demanding and just left me emotionally drained.

Wanted to go longer, but I much more wanted to see Emm when she got out of work as I haven't seen her all week. Ran most miles between 8:44 and 8:57 pace, with the last .7 run sub 8:00. Felt relaxed and good throughout, minus sweating. I am really starting to loathe sweating as it makes me uncomfortable.

Total Time: 1:06:10 Total Distance: 7.70 miles Average Pace: 8:36