STR: Days 26-30

Time to catch up on the last several days of workouts!

Day 26
Finished up the week with a strength workout. Feeling tired at the end of the week, and also heavy--we over-ate to honor our Founding Fathers (and it would be downright unpatriotic not to drink a Sam Adams on the 4th, right?). But I got through it, so that's that.

Day 27
Rest day. Nothing to see here.

Day 28
This was a rest day, but late in the evening my 3-and-a-half-year-old suggested a bike ride, and since I knew Lauren would appreciate not having the kids underfoot while she did grad school work, I agreed. Who am I to turn down a surprise workout? I did a wandering loop around town that amounted to 5 miles, which isn't that much on a bike... but also isn't that short when pulling around 2 kids and a bike trailer. Our older girl actually fell asleep on the ride, despite the train tracks and frequent pot holes.

Day 29
I've settled into a routine for my strength training: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I alternate between two routines. This Monday, however, I started to feel like it's getting stale. Maybe the problem is that I had high hopes that I didn't quite meet. Both of the routines start with one-legged squats, and I felt like I had a good enough week last week that with rest Saturday and Sunday I ought to be able to have my best one-legged squats yet. Nope.

They were okay, but no better than any of the sets I did last week, and a little worse than some. Maybe the bike ride from the previous night sapped my leg strength?

I actually had the best one-armed push-ups of the summer: on my right side, I got through all five sets of five, and I got one whole set of 5 with my left arm (I had to cheat with the others). Australian pull-ups were good, push-ups were good, core work (reverse crunches and back raises) were good. Still, I couldn't shake a vague dissatisfaction.

Day 30: Tuesday
Back on my regular schedule of doing my 6+ mile run on Tuesday. The first half of the run was faster than it has been: 8:15 to run the first mile, 28:00 to run the first 3.31 miles (8:28 pace). Maybe the unleashed dog who came out from one farm to "greet" me helped with a little adrenaline burst--he seemed friendly enough, but the barking and the way he ran at me from behind probably prompted the production of some adrenaline to help my run along. However, despite how fast the first half was, the return trip was not just slower, but painfully slow. I wanted to quit. I wanted a water station. I wanted to quit and drown myself in a large pool of water. It was a minor victory that I didn't stop and walk. My entire 6.62-mile run took 57:34 (8:42 pace), closer to my time two weeks ago (57:37) than to my time last Thursday (57:05). So even though my first mile and the first half of the run were the fastest I've run them this summer, I was almost as slow, overall, as my slowest time on this distance. Why?

Well, it could be that I ran too hard on the first half, that I pushed myself and didn't leave enough in the tank to bring it home. But if that's the answer, it's only part of the answer. I think it has more to do with when I ran. You see, Lauren is down in Indianapolis all week for graduate school, so I couldn't start my run until our nanny got here at 8:00. Normally, I'm out the door for a run around 6:00, when it's still nice and cool. I think the sun just killed me.

Of course, this is a bad sign for my racing career. I'm going to have to limit myself to events with names like the Dusk Dash 10k, the Midnight Marathon, or the 10 k-rack of dawn race. (I have no reason to believe that any of those exist).