Cut-back Week

I’m a planner and a perfectionist and when things don’t go as planned, it stresses me out. But as I’ve learned in life, things never go as I planned—case in point: the thought of living in Alaska never even crossed my mind, I thought I would be a teacher my whole life, and I thought I’d get married at 21/22 and have a couple of kids by now.

Needless to say, this week didn’t go quite as I planned. After stressing about it for a few days, I’m okay with how this week turned out because I feel refreshed and ready to run some high mileage this next week.

After my first 80 mile week followed by my first 90 mile week, I think my legs rebelled a little. Despite taking Monday off, my legs were not recovering, so I ended up taking two days off this week.

Here’s how my week of running went down:

Monday

Off – I badly needed a day off, and it helped but apparently not enough. 😕

Tuesday

10 miles/1:15 (with a new tempo workout)

45 minutes weight lifting

Wednesday

AM – 8 miles/1:06

PM – 5 miles/39:30

Thursday

9 miles/1:15

45 minutes weight lifting (just upper body so my legs could recover)

Friday

Off – I just wasn’t feeling any better, so I decided to take another day off. I don’t want to go through this entire marathon training session fatigued the whole time. Maybe other people can do it, but it wasn’t making my daily runs enjoyable.

Saturday

Distance: 22 miles

Time: 2:53

Average pace: 7:54 minutes/mile

I think this means I’m back in the game! I felt really good during this run, and my average pace was the same as it was during Grandma’s Marathon! If I can maintain a marathon race pace in a training run (minus 4 miles), that gives me confidence I can run the Twin Cities Marathon faster!

I tired a new energy gel during Saturday’s run—GU Rocktane. It was about $0.50 more than the regular GU but often times you get what you pay for, so I wanted to see if it was worth the extra 50 cents. Verdict: I really think it helped me more than other energy gels —or then again it could be in my head, but I went from running 8:00-8:10 minutes/mile to 7:40, even 7:30 minutes per mile! It was great. What wasn’t all that great was the flavor. At first I thought it tasted good, but then it reminded me of medicine from when I was a child—amoxicillin possibly?

Sunday

8 miles/1:05

Total: 62 miles

I really missed running high mileage this week, but it was probably good to take a break. This next week, I’m hoping for some high mileage again—I’m excited!! I’ll fill you in on how it goes!!

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Job update. . . . .

The new job is going quite well—except the fact my brain hurts at the end of the day from all the new terminology and insane amount of acronyms!!

The crazy thing was that I showed up for work on the first day and literally the first thing one of my co-workers said to me, “oh yeah, we discovered your blog.” I was flattered but mostly worried I had written something bad.

I definitely do not miss teaching—school starts this week. And I’m pretty sure I am not going to be very stressed out in my new job, which is a very good thing. The only complaint I have so far is that I get really tired of sitting all day. Maybe I can convince my new employer to let me get a desk where I can raise and lower the height of the desk so I could stand and sit as I wanted!