catherine's running efforts

I've been feeling bummed about stuff and letting it keep me from running. But today's a holiday and we had extra time in the morning, so I went to the gym at around 9:30 and decided to see if I can run 5 miles every day this week. I don't know when I'm going to run tomorrow; running in the morning is a lot better for me, but we're meeting some people for breakfast at 7:00 and then Eric has class at 9:30. I guess I could wake up to run before then, but I'm also not great at getting out of bed so early these days. 

It was really really nice to run this morning, though. I know 8:00 isn't fast by very many people's standards, but for only my second time running in January I was happy that it wasn't too hard for me. I was ready to be done by the end, but it was a manageable and mostly enjoyable pace. I did most of the run at 0.5% incline (I decided to do the Rex Lee 5k in March, and that one is about half uphill), and at 4.5 I did 6% incline at the same pace for 0.25. That was pretty hard. Then I did the last 0.25 at -3% and it felt awesome. 

After the treadmill I did the pullup machine. I would feel so cool if I could do a pullup. I set it at 60 pounds (so I was pulling up about 45 pounds) and did 10 pullups (or 7...the last 2-3 I couldn't completely pull up) and 5 dips (the last one was in about 5 stages).

So far I feel fine - just some soreness on the bottoms of my feet. That always happens when I start running again, though.  

Same as yesterday, but today I got to the gym at about 5:20. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - kind of cold on the ride over, but not cold on the way back home and very nice to get it all done so early (home and showered before 6:45!). 

5 miles, 8:00 pace, 0.5% incline. At 4.5 I switched the incline to 6% for .25, then I switched to -3% for the last .25 and 7:00 pace for the last .1. My feet are getting blisters since I'm not used to running, but that (and the leg soreness that I started feeling today) should go away within a few days (right?). 

Third morning in a row of going to the gym and doing my 5 miles. I'm really happy that I've been able to do it. It's kind of a big deal for me - I don't usually make myself get out of bed earlier than I have to. Even though I like doing it after I've done it, I haven't done it for months and months (I think). I'm also glad that I've been able to make myself do the full 5 miles each time. 

Today was harder because I was so sore. The soreness on the bottom of my feet is going away,  but my legs are just generally tired and sore. All of that would be fine, but my right tendon has been hurting pretty bad. I don't want to back off - if I just do 3 more days, I can rest on Sunday. And I'd like to have a 30 mile week. But if it's something that's starting to be injured, I don't want to have to lose more time than just taking it easier for a couple of days. I think this happened last spring - I'll look up my entries and see how long it lasted and what I did. 

I looked it up. I kind of hurt my achilles (I will not capitalize that, even if it's the right way) on a Saturday. I ran 5 on Monday, 5 on Tuesday, nothing on Wednesday, and it didn't hurt on Thursday (thanks, FRB). I think tomorrow I'll start off on my normal run and see how it feels. If it feels like it's going to get injured, I'll stop or switch to something else or something. If it feels like it's working in, I'll keep going.  

Spin class. It was okay. The instructor was kind of princess-y. My bum bones got sore. 

Elliptical for 30 minutes. Because of my tendon. 

Elliptical for 20 minutes. Because of my tendon and because we had to go to a birthday party. 

No exercise because I puked last night and Elliott woke up three times. 

I was excited to be back on the treadmill again (really) and was on the path to finishing my intended run. But after about 1.5 my tendon started hurting again, and by 4 it was pretty bad and just getting worse so I stopped. 8:00 pace, 0.5% incline. 

I'm super bummed that I've got the motivation and don't feel like 5 a day is too hard - it's just this tendon. I think that for the rest of the week I'll run until it starts hurting and then switch to the elliptical. And be lamesauce. Because the elliptical sucks.  

My tendon hurt pretty bad at the end of yesterday's run so I'm backing off again. 30 minutes on the elliptical. I played around with speed and resistance more, though, so hopefully it wasn't a complete waste of time.