In a Tizzy of Tired

How often do you ask someone how they are doing and their response goes something like, "I'm good, just tired". I feel like we all go through life carrying out tasks, set on level "tired". How ever do we get through it? I'm coming to see that there are actually different levels of tired that one can experience. There's the sleep-deprived tired, that comes with staying up too late to just finish this one last thing or just one more text message. Or the end-of-the-week exhausted tired, when the week's worth of stress and the "forget this, it's Friday" paper work is set aside for two days, hits you. And of course, my personal favorite, and more recently consistent, is the body fatigue tired. All of these have hit me this past week and my remedy for all of them is to have another cup of coffee. I should probably sign myself up for caffeine-addicts anonymous, but that would be admitting that I have a problem....

So this week of training got a little bit harder. Three weeks in and my legs are no longer "fresh". Rather they are working off the build up from the week prior. The good thing about this is that by working through the soreness I can feel myself getting stronger. I had to move one of my workout days around, swap the bike for the run because of time restraints, and Steph's response, "That's fine, the goal is for your legs to be tired for your long run on Friday." I love that she is setting me up for a more realistic idea of what it feels like to run on tired legs, but it's definitely not as fun when you're actually doing it. This past Friday I had an 8 mile run, the longest distance in training so far. Now 8 miles for me is a cake walk. But when I actually hit the lake path I was just trying to convince myself that I could do this and to ignore the muscle soreness. It didn't help that I was fighting the wind for the majority of the run as well. And let me just say, it's so frustrating to run and feel like you're being pushed backwards, I actually found myself cursing at the wind out loud :/ I felt so fulfilled finishing that run, but at the same time, so sore and so, so tired! I quickly showered, threw on the closest pair of clean sweats and just fell asleep for an hour. My body had given up.

Week days are starting to fall suit into a pattern, and I'm beginning to figure out what days workouts fit where. Most mornings, unless I've gotten to bed by 9pm, I have difficulty getting up to do one of the workouts. Not to mention, I usually set my alarm for a good 45 minutes before the workout so I can have a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee--I rarely workout without eating first. Plus then after the workout I can have second breakfast....yum!!! But the point I'm getting to is that through toughing out the "tired" I'm learning a lot about my body and how much it can handle. Some mornings I just give up on even considering the early workout and just place it all in the afternoon. And I've even been looking forward to rest days.....I don't think I have ever said that O_o


So next week will be a recovery week, which I can let up a little on the workouts and let the tired just kind of ease out of the body so I can come back stronger at the start of month two!