dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

Total time of 1:35:00.  I know that I ran over 12 miles, just not sure by how much.

TLDR:  1.25 miles in 8:00 during the first half, and 2 miles in 11:42 during the second half.

Full Version:  I ran South until I hit the Murdock canal trail and started running West on the trail.  I had to use the bathroom, and knowing that the closest bathroom was a fair way down the trail I decided to speed up in order to decrease the amount of time spent running with stomach cramps.  I timed 1.25 miles on the trail in 8:00 (1:37, 1:35, 1:32, 1:41, 1:35).  This didn't feel particularly hard, and would have been faster except I had to slow down during the fourth quarter due to stomach cramps.  After using the bathroom I continued down the trail until I hit 47:30 on my watch at which point I turned around to head back home.

I started a 2 mile tempo about 30 second after turning around.  The first quarter had a lot of steep uphill in it (1:36), followed by a flat second quarter (1:26), and a third quarter that was probably net downhill with a downhill beginning and uphill finish (1:23).  The fourth quarter started uphill before flattening out eventually (1:30), followed by mostly flat fifth and sixth quarters (1:26, 1:26), and what felt like a very mild uphill for the last two quarters (1:29, 1:26), and a total time of 11:42 (5:55, 5:47).  Edit:  I checked the elevation change on the course tool, and I had an estimated net gain of 49 ft for the 2 miles, 43 ft during the first mile, and 6 ft during the second mile.  The timed 1.25 mile stretch on the way out which coincided with the last 1.25 miles of the second half's tempo had a net loss of 19 ft.

I then finished the run running back up to the house and arriving in 1:34:48 and jogging a circle around the round about to finish off my run in 1:35:00.  I felt stiff after finishing the tempo run, which has been a consistent theme for me lately, and the last 4+ miles were pretty slow (over 8:00 pace).  I'm not sure what the problem is, I just know that I have frequently felt stiff lately, especially if I have been sitting/lying down, and at the beginning of my runs (less frequently at the end of my run as happened today).  Depending on how I feel next week I may take an easy week where I only run 60ish minutes per day (plus my planned "long" run of 1:40:00 as I don't want to cut that short) instead of the planned 82 minutes per day.

Total time of 1:40:00

TLDR:  2+ mile tempo in 12:35.  I hit the 2 mile mark at 11:33.

Full Version:  After considering last week to drop down my running time this week I ended up running the full distance that I had originally planned, but I skipped out on speed workouts until today and just ran 1:22:00 easy every day from Monday through Friday.  I was also planning on running easy today, but as the run progressed I ended up deciding to run a tempo after I turned around just after 50:00.

I started off the run at a slow pace but then fairly quickly sped up to where I was running somewhere in the 7:20-7:40 range which progressively got faster until I was running close to 7:00 pace, which I averaged for a stretch of almost 3 miles that I measured on the canal trail until I turned around.  I hit the turn around at 50:07 and then immediately started a 2+ mile tempo.  I started off a little slow on the tempo, only running my first quarter in 93 seconds, but after that I sped up and every quarter thereafter was assumed to have been under 90 seconds (some markers were missing, so I don't have split times for most quarters).  I hit the 2 mile mark of the tempo at 11:33, but continued for a little longer as I wanted to time a half mile segment that was marked on the trail, and I finished the tempo in 12:35 (I must have looked at my watch wrong because I timed the last 0.5 in 2:43, which was maybe a 2:53 instead assuming that I misread my watch, thinking that it read xx:59 instead of xx:49?).

I then finished the run, running back home and arriving less than a minute before my watch hit 1:40:00, and running back and forth in the driveway until I finished. 

I ran 1:24:00 on both Monday and Tuesday of this week.  I think that I got food poisoning from something and I had very runny bowels on Wednesday and today.  Since my achilles has still been feeling off (sometimes painful, but mostly just stiff), and in general I have been feeling tired I decided to scale back my workouts a lot in order to try and let the achilles recover, get over the food poisoning, and try to eliminate the fatigue.  As a result, I only ran for about 10 minutes yesterday, and today I only ran for about 30 minutes.  I felt like today's run was pain free, which was nice.

I am trying different things to see what helps with the fatigue.  I am going to try to see if I can adjust my bedtime routine to make my sleep more restful (I don't think this is really a problem per se, but I figure it can't hurt).  I am also going to try to up my water intake, and I am looking into trying out some supplements as I wonder if I have some sort of vitamin deficiency.