Look what came in the mail finally. I ordered a small thing of pepper spray I could hold in my hand while I run. I’m really excited for this because it will provide me with the peace of mind I need on my early morning runs.

If I’ve learned anything over the past couple weeks is you can never be too careful.

It’s super light and even though I know it’s there it really isn’t a problem when running.

 

It’s Sunday again which means we are sadly heading back home from the beach, but it also means another week of running has come to an end. This week wasn’t my best. I don’t really know what it was but I was so exhausted all week.

I’ve been taking on a lot more work, so that may have played a role or it could be that I need to adjust something in my training. My focus this coming week is to evaluate last week and try to figure out what was causing me to be so lethargic. Sometimes we just have off weeks, so that could be it too.

 

Here is a look at my running for the week.

Monday

I was so thankful that Monday started off with lows in the upper 40’s! Even though I still had to wear long sleeves, it was nice to be able to go outside and not put quite as many layers on.

I started the week off with 9 miles easy. It was a good run overall, nothing real exciting to report but I felt my best on Monday this week.

 

Tuesday

Tuesday was when things started to take a turn. I woke up and was dragging immediately. If I had stayed one more second in bed there was a good chance I would have never made it up to run.

I had created the following workout the night before:

2 mile warm up
12 x 400 (started at 6:40 and worked down to 6:30)
0.5 mile recovery
4 x 200 (started at 6:11 and worked down to 6:07)
1 mile cool down

In total it covered just over 9 miles.

This was a tough workout. The first 7-8 400’s didn’t feel too bad but the more I progressed into it the harder it got.  I guess that is to be expected though.

 

Wednesday

I made it a point to take Wednesday’s run slow. I mean really slow. I could tell my body was tired and I didn’t want to push it anymore that I had to.

This didn’t end up being a problem at all. I switched up my course a little bit and stayed closer to home. My normal course was getting old so I wanted to do something slightly different.

I ended up doing about 8.6 miles at a 9:30 average pace. I stuck to going slow the entire time. There wasn’t even a point I thought about picking up my leg speed. I wanted to get back earlier to be able to have a good amount of time to foam roll and stretch, but underestimated just how slow I would be running so instead I had to do a extremely quick foam rolling session before I got ready for work.

 

Thursday

I knew Wednesday night that another super fast workout wasn’t in the cards for me. You can’t go all out for every workout, so I started trying to come up with more of a “cruise interval” type workout.

I decided on a workout I had done previously:

2.5 mile warm up
5 minutes x 2 minutes (5 minutes at 7:08 and 2 minutes recovery) x5
2 mile cool down

The workout seemed simple enough and keeping it in the 7’s seemed much better than the quicker paces I did Tuesday. I can tell you one thing though, that 7:08 pace felt extremely hard. I was able to get through it all but I was pretty wiped at the end.

In total I did just over 9 miles.

 

Friday

I welcomed this rest day with WIDE OPEN arms! We traveled to the beach after we got off work on Friday and I knew my legs were happy to have a break!

 

Saturday

We woke up at the beach on Saturday and Wes decided he and his dad were going to go to the gym to get their run in.  He wanted to get in a good tempo run and was afraid that the crazy wind that was supposed to come would mess it up.

I went back and forth trying to decide what I wanted to do. In the end I decided to try and beat the 30 mph winds and head out to run.

I ended up running 14 miles in honor of Valentine’s Day and it went really well. Sometimes the roads down here seem extra long. My iPod wouldn’t work when I got outside so I ended up running it without music. It wasn’t near as bad as I was expecting.

A great long run to end out a tiring week.

 

Sunday

I have on the schedule to run an easy 8 miles.  As I type this I am hoping that they go well, but we will see!

 

There you have it. It was a long week and a tiring week, but I made it through! I am looking forward to an extra day off from work this week since I have Monday off. One benefit of being back in the finance industry!

 

How did your running go this week?

Anyone else feeling more tired than usual?