You must be lost

I've got a long, (though shorthanded) entry in the works to recap my very busy week last week. The week that I thought was going to beat me into submission at around Wednesday, but I owned it. I freakin' OWNED IT!

Anyway, today, as Nikki of Moms who drink and swear or more specifically, Nikki's Blithering Blog* would say, Thursday is my bitch!

*I can not thank cleopatramwi enough for sharing those nuggets of unorthodox joy

Wednesday dragged me down into a pit and attempted to drown me, much like last Wednesday, actually, but more emotional. But Thursday? No, Thursday is MY BITCH!

( Let me show you it. )

As has been mentioned, I got in some yoga last week. It hurt later, but I was glad I did it and will continue to try to fit in an hour or two a week. Unfortunately, since my mother-in-law came up on Saturday and I decided Sunday needed to be spent weeding and cleaning up the front bed, I didn't get my runs in on two gorgeous weekend days. It's really hard to get weekend runs in. So, that means I only ran twice last week. So much for catching up on what I missed the week before. This week I'm on schedule at least. But, here's last week:

Monday - rest
Tuesday - 2.25 mile straight run without stroller; 2.8 miles total in 35.19 mins
Wednesday - rest
Thursday - 2.5 mile straight run without stroller; 3.14 miles total in 40:55 mins
Friday - 1 hour of yoga
Saturday - rest
Sunday - rest

Mileage Totals:
Week - 12.22
Month - 22.88
Year - 110.43

Still didn't get all four days in last week. Was all set to go yesterday, walked out the front door starting the stopwatch and everything, but heard some thunder and noticed it was starting to rain (and was still quite slick from the rain earlier in the day). So, I came in and did laundry instead. Would have much rather been running, for sure!

Monday - exhausted from the weekend!
Tuesday - rest
Wednesday - 2.25 mile straight run w/stroller; 2.53 total miles in 33:38 mins
Thursday - 2.25 mile straight run w/stroller; 2.8 total miles in 38:05 mins (do not go in the heat of the day! DUH!)
Friday - rest
Saturday - 2.25 mile straight run w/o stroller; 2.8 total miles in 35:27 mins (AWESOME run! felt great!)
Sunday - rest (I tried, I really tried)

Mileage totals:
Week - 8.13
Month - 10.66
Year - 98.21

Exciting, my next run will put me over 100 miles this year! I know, that's not a ton of running for 7 months, but I'm proud of it. It's a lot more than I've done in certain years past. Hell, I could barely push through a mile in high school and I thought I was in much better shape then.

Since I missed a run last week, I'm going to try to work in 5 runs this week, the first of which will be another 2.25 mile run (tomorrow). Then I'm going to bump up to 2.5 miles for the rest of the week. Next week will be 3 miles (almost there!). The week after, I'll take it to 3.5 miles. I'm debating on if I should try to go to 4 miles before I start working on speed (which will extend my 5k plan another week). I'm devising a plan to alternate various speed and endurance workouts once I finish the initial 5k plan I'm doing right now. I hope to have that hammered out by the end of the week and will post it here for opinions. I really want to get down to a 10 minute or less mile by the end of the year. I'd love to be able to run the zoo 5k in January right at or under 30 minutes if I can.

Today was supposed to be a yoga day. Put Jonah down for a nap and went in the office to take care of a couple of things and the next thing I know, it's 4pm. I swear, I have a hard time watching the clock on days when I didn't get much sleep. I also have a hard time with my internal clock. Usually I have a good idea of how much time has passed when I'm working on things, but today, I've just been lost. Must do better tomorrow. Jonah's going back to school for the first time in two weeks. So help me god if I get a call that he's got a fever. . .

Well, I went running today for the first time in 8.5 weeks.

The good news: I can still do two miles without hurting too bad. Breathing was actually easy. Never got a catch in my side and no burning in the lungs or heaving. The heat and humidity are good for something, at least for me. I don't think I've gained much weight in the past two months that I've been off the wagon. I feel like I have, but the scale says otherwise. I may have started to lose a bit of muscle. Which means I'm probably going to be couple of pounds heavier tomorrow, because, well, that's just how it seems to work with me. I think because of how I lost the weight I managed to lose before, it's stayed off more easily. That gives me hope for weight maintenance in the future.

The bad news: I've lost a couple of minutes of time (overall, still not timing individual miles) and my legs are very tight even after extra long warm up/cool down and stretching. I'm anticipating it taking a good week or so to get the kinks worked back out again. Then, of course, my yoga DVD should be here so I'll start doing that and cause all sorts of new kinks for a while. This was kind of the last straw. I'm feeling aches and pains again that were around before I started running (knees, that pesky ankle thingy though it's not as bad as it was, lower back, shoulders, etc.). I'm also just generally feeling unhealthy, what with no exercise paired with things like bacon wrapped smoked pork loins and homemade sausage and such.

I'm really going to try to get back on this. I feel like my life would get back to normal just by changing this one aspect. Also, I don't know why I wasn't running when I was in full time contemplative mode. Half an hour, 5 times a week to be alone with my thoughts. Why didn't that make perfect sense? And the weather was so nice then, aside from tons and tons of rain.

So, here goes. I've missed all the early summer races I wanted to run because, well, I wasn't running. Here's what I'm pondering now (because I'm just the sort of person that has to have a deadline of some sort to procrastinate against):

Sept. 12th - Broken Wheel Festival 5k in Nolensville (just because it gives us an excuse to go to Nolensville and therefore go eat at Martin's Barbecue after the race, thereby undoing all the good work I will have done that morning by running a 5k, heh).

Sept. 26th - Shelby Bottoms Boogie 15k/5k

Oct. 10th - Germantown 5K Bier Run (no link yet)

Oct. 17th - I Run for the Party Halloween 5k

Oct/Nov ??? - Superhero 5k in Asheville, NC (they still have their Ninja 5k info up from May so no info yet).

Not saying I'm going to run all of these, they're just the ones I'm looking into. If I can do 5 days at 2 miles a day next week, that will basically be week 1 of the 5k plan I was doing before.

In addition to this, of course I'm going to start using the yoga DVD as soon as I get it. It's the show I used to do when we had satellite, but since we no longer have satellite, I spent $15 on his DVD. It's Kurt Johnsen's Yoga for Life, if anyone is interested. Also, I'm going to start doing push-ups and sit-ups again. Just a few at first, like maybe ten of each per day. I just noticed that I was getting a lot more toned with a lot less mileage when I was doing some calisthenics along with the aerobic exercise.

Ass kicking and cheerleading are welcome.

This is barely worth recording, but I guess I should to keep up with mileage and such. The only day I ran was Sunday, so here it is.

Sunday - Supposed to be a 2 mile straight run, but turned into a 1.65 mile interval run; 2.53 miles in 32:18; 1st mile 10:52, 2nd .65 mile 7:31, a .25 mile/4:13 walking break between them.

Mileage totals:
Week: 2.53
Month: 2.53
Year: 27.10

This week it's back on the horse. The running really helped my congestion yesterday and I'm pretty sure I've shaken most of the sinus infection. At this rate, if I don't miss anymore weeks, I should be done with my 5k training and easily running 3.5 miles by the end of the first week of March. Today should just be a 1 mile run, so I'm really going to try to come in and do an hour of yoga after it. I've got to pick back up or at least do some form of cross training.

It was hard, but I did it. Humidity was killing me this week. I just felt really heavy. Will definitely be repeating what was intended for this week's plan next week.

Monday - 2.61 miles in 35 mins (run 5/walk 1)
Tuesday - 2.18 miles in 30 mins (run 5/walk 2)
Wednesday - 2.53 miles in 35 mins (run 5/walk 1) + 1 mile walk with Jennifer
Thursday - 1 hour of yoga
Friday - 2.53 miles in 33 mins (run 5/walk 1)
Saturday - 2.18 miles in 30 mins (run 5/walk 1)
Sunday - rest or possibly a hike with sailingwest if she's up to it

Distance totals:
Week - 13.05
Month - 24.17
Year - 60.76

I'm at 49% of my goal of 50 miles in the month of September.