running: the dawn

I’m not sure whether I should say “wow” or “whoops” after this week.  I meant to do 26 miles…ended up being closer to 30.  So, instead of increasing my mileage by 10%, it was 25%.  I guess I’ll wait to see how I feel tomorrow before I decide if it was a good thing or not.

Here’s how the mileage breaks down:

Sunday-8; my “neither here nor there” ho-hum day of running.
Monday-5 total; two in the morning with KT, then 3 in the afternoon.
Tuesday-nada; took the day off from running
Wednesday-4.5; snow day! slippery run.
Thursday-5; don’t really remember much about this one….not sure what that means.
Friday-7; the only hour of the day when my head didn’t hurt.

Total Miles: 29.5

Aside from running I did two hours of Jazzercise and one hour of core strengthening.

My main regret this week is that I did not stick to the early morning workouts.  I’ve been trying to be consistent about getting up early and either running or strength training here at home.  So, while I LOVED that snow day we had on Wednesday, the sleeping in kinda messed with my groove.  Since I didn’t get up early, I ended up staying up later than usual, which made the getting up early impossible, and so the cycle repeated until I found myself at the end of the week.  Now my goals for next week are: 30 miles of running, 3 hours of Jazzercise, 3 hours of strength training, and waking up early Tuesday-Friday (Monday is a holiday).

Whew. The end of another week.

I am pleased to report that I was able, despite my mile-less Wednesday, to meet my goal of 24 miles this week! They break down as follows:

Sunday-7; I ran the long run alone on a very hilly route.  Cold.
Monday-5; Decided to up my miles since my legs were feeling so great.
Tuesday-2; Back to the early morning run with KT. Good conversation, easy run.
Wednesday-0.5; Had a mild meltdown mid-run. Spent the rest of the evening pouting about it.
Thursday-3; Early morning with KT. My meltdown recovery run.
Friday-7; Did a back-to-the-basics run. No ipod, no nike+. Just me, the road and my stopwatch.

Total miles: 24.5

I also did 3 hours of “home-gym” and 3 hours of Jazzercise.

It feels great to be increasing my weekly mileage. It feels even better to know that even when things don’t go according to plans, it is still possible to meet my goals.  Looking forward to a day of rest with no miles and no guilt for not running.  Then I should be ready to run a strong 8 miles on Sunday.  Right now, the predicted high on Sunday is 28 and since we’re not going to be running until sometime in the afternoon, it should be close to that.

No worries, we plan to finish with plenty of time to be ready for the Superbowl on Sunday.  GO SAINTS!

At the end of each week I plan on including a running miles/workout stats, so that I can track my progress over time.  I missed my first two weeks, but I gotta start somewhere, so here it goes.

Summary
Running:
Sunday–6; This was our long run for the week.  It felt really good.
Monday–2; This was just a short run to shake out the soreness from the long run.  We took it slow.
Wednesday–4; Wow, the day I froze.  This is when the temps plummeted and we haven’t seen the 20′s since then.
Thursday–7; These miles were split.  4 I ran on my own in the afternoon, and 3 later that same night with Keren.  Oh yeah, it was snowing.
Friday–2; A quick to miles to check how my speed is improving.  8:43 pace.  I need to keep working on that.

Total Miles: 21

Not bad.  I did log 23 miles last week and I should be increasing as the weeks go by, not going the other direction.  However I did start doing more cross training this week with the Jazzercise.  I went to a regular (hour-long) class on both Monday and Tuesday nights, and a 30-minute express class on Thursday (in between the 7 miles of running)

My favorite part of the week was yesterday morning.  I found out that I didn’t have to be a work at 8am like usual, so KT came over for some strength training and core work.  It was fabulous.  I am quite sore today and last night she was sending me text messages about how she couldn’t move because of the workout.

I can’t lie.  I do love a little soreness.  It makes me feel like I did something, like I earned a badge of some kind.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an advocate of prolonged muscle fatigue or pain.  But, as I’m going about my day I like to be reminded of the hard work that I put in the day before.  It actually motivates me to do something again today.