Training Update: Adjusting

Thursday 8.31- Ran the tempo up and down camp road. It was really really hot. I thought going into it that I had a really good chance of breaking 30 minutes. Then the hills came and my focus was to not give up and make it a good effort. I think I accomplished that. A snazzy time would have been nice but effort is enough for now.

Sat 9/1- Went to a field with a friend from camp, Tanner, who goes to UVA. We did some barefoot X's for ten minutes. Felt snappy and good. I needed some more distance after running with Tanner so I stopped on the drive back and found a good 20 second hill on camp road. I did 8 reps of that and was pretty kaput. It felt good though. I miss hill sprints. Tanner also led some yoga that felt good. My hips and hamstrings should be taken better care of.

Week 1: Well, after forgetting how long the very first long run was supposed to be, I fell 20 minutes short of the weekly mileage goal. I'm not too upset by it. 600 minutes is still quality and I think the 100 minutes I did made more sense in the moment. It was a hot and humid week. I'm not super excited to go on my runs and 100 minutes still seems like a lot. It doesn't seem like the baseline yet. But I didn't get injured and I ran a lot and that's really all that matters in this first week of the comeback trail.

Sun 9/2- Broke 2 hours! Woo. Haven't done that since May. It was a pretty slow run on trails. All about getting time on the feet. Again, I'm not sticking to my aggressive long run schedule. I definitely did not cover 20 miles in that time. It probably wasn't too much longer in distance than the 100 minutes run from the first week. I felt good though.

Today and yesterday-- The work from the weekend catches up to me. Felt very slow to start today but got in a good rhythm about 30 minutes in. This week is about getting used to long daily running. Oh, yesterday I got to 93 minutes and was running by the pool at camp and instead of running for 7 more minutes I turned that into swimming in the pool. Hooray. 

Tomorrow is a workout! I'm going to go to a hilly residential loop and do 3 x 10 minutes hard with ~5 minutes jogging rest. It's going to be extremely hot and humid again so this is about effort. 

Things are starting to come a little bit easier. It's still a task to get through the week but I expect that once the mileage peaks I'll start to enjoy running a little more and feel a little better about racing and workouts. We'll see. I also don't want to over think it and just appreciate running as my favorite thing to do. I <3 p="" running.="">