Feelin' that Fatigue

Sunday mornings are my favorite time. There's (not usually) a rush to get anywhere, I can sit with a cup of coffee (after a glass of water of course!) and read through post-secret/email and update my blog. It's really the calm before the storm....since after I'm done here I know I have my longest workout of the week....I like to go looooong on Sundays :) So to delay the inevitable, I figured I'd pick up the pieces to the rest of my week/end. The pain/soreness is a lot less prevalent today, which I guess is good since I hope it means I'm getting stronger. Slowly but surely.

Friday was my run day, and it was well needed. Not to mention it was 56 degrees outside! Amaaaazing for mid-January! My set had me going 6 miles, 1 easy mile, 3 at Half Marathon pace, and 2 at 10k pace. I love the way Steph structures my runs because they are more based off of feel, and having just a few races under my belt, I can tell the difference between 10k and half marathon. As soon as I walked through my door after work I threw on my shorts, (yes shorts!), a long sleeve T, and busted up out my door. I encountered some slight difficulties when I was coming back, since I got so excited my first mile was pretty fast and my pace didn't drop significantly through 2 and 3. One of the things on my "To-Do" list is to set up my heart rate monitor, so I can get a better idea of how fast I'm going, but until then I need to learn to not go all out, stamina sam!

When I got back I decided to hit the gym, since I still had the other half of my strength circuit left from the other day. Upper body, woot woot! Now I have this thing about being in any gym at 5pm. I CANNOT STAND IT! Mostly because that's when everyone comes feeding in, like cockroaches out of the wood work. But, lucky for me, my gym, on a Friday, doesn't get like that. Apparently, ain't nobody got time to get fitness in on a Friday night. haha. So I got through everything and took my tired self home to my sweat pants.

Saturday was another gorgeous day outside. But as it was written, I had an 80 minute bike ride, inside, with 3 X 5 minute zone 3-4 intervals. Needless to say, I was kinda bummed I couldn't run. So before I got on the bike I texted Steph, "Can I please run today? Just a little bit? Please!?" haha I laughed to myself thinking, "Wow, you just asked your coach if you can do another workout....please ma'am, may I have another?" She responded by telling me I could only run if I had only gone for 60 minutes on the bike and if I had done the full 80 I could run for NO MORE than 15 minutes......but I could walk for however long I wanted. As luck would have it I was at 62 minutes. I hopped up off that bike faster than the road-runner and left the fotress-of-solitude, that is the gym :)

My run was short, but fast. I caught the tail end of the Polar Dash Half marathon and joined in. Even though I wasn't racing, I was immediately racing everyone. The competitive drive inside of me told me to go-go-go! As fast as you can, past as many people. Mind you they were 7 miles into a race and I was 60 minutes off a bike and maybe 2 miles into a run. To stop myself from running all the way back up to Grant Park I pulled away from the race for two miles the other direction. But I found myself back on the race path and people were cheering for me because it now looked like I was one of the last people running. Damn. I saw the turn around point. At that moment I picked up my pace, close to a sprint and ran through it yelling, "I WON, I WON!" The race volunteer was very confused, but then I just kept running away from the race. It was worth a good laugh. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and relaxing, and eventually headed over to Steph and Jeff's for a bike/gear changing clinic....and yes, there was pizza.....