Good News/Bad News

Well today and yesterday were sort of a mixed bag. Not great running today, but I felt really good yesterday. So here's the breakdown.

Last night (Tuesday) I had my weekly running class. We did mile intervals, so we ran 1 mile three times (this is different than running three miles b/c we do short "recoveries" between each mile). I was fairly pleased with my pace for the miles, running each in about 6:49. Our total mileage for the class last night was about 6, which is nice. I'm always glad when I can get good miles in early in the week.

Today, however, I ran a short 4 miler and I didn't feel so hot. For starters, when I ran at about 4:30 this afternoon it was still a gross, sticky 91 degrees. This does not make for the most pleasant running. The afternoon's heat, coupled with the fact that I'm running 10 miles tomorrow (in what looks to be equally gross weather) made me decide not to time my run today. I wore my watch, but didn't measure my time at all. This way, I didn't have any pressure to run particularly fast or push myself too much in the heat. I feel as though I ran my normal pace, but am not at all concerned about how long it took me.

The other thing that bothered me today was the fact that I felt a bit "heavy." I put "heavy" in quotes b/c I just felt slow and sluggish. This is most likely due to the fact that the weather was so oppressive, but I also attribute it to the fact that I'm not losing weight at quite the rate that I had hoped for. I think I'm eating way to much these days and the stuff I'm eating is not good. For instance, today at lunch I had two Rice Krispie Treats, not to mention all the other crap I had for lunch. I would have been fine without those two sweets. If I'm still hungry, I should eat an apple. I have been warned that dieting is not wise while training for a marathon, but I feel that I could be making better food choices than I am now . . . I have this feeling that since I'm running so much more than I ever have, that I have license to eat whatever I want . . . which is not really the case.

I'm also realizing that I'm just not stretching enough before and after I run. I've been better about it than I used to be, but the fact is, I need to build time in around my runs to make sure that I'm stretching enough so that I don't hurt myself in any way. If I can't find the time to stretch now, during the summer, then I'm really in trouble once the school year starts up . . .

Looking ahead, tomorrow I'm running my longest run ever, 10 miles. I'm pretty nervous, mostly about the heat, but I'm going to go out and do my best. The nice thing about scheduling a long run on Thursday is that if I find that I can't finish, or something happens, I can still find time to get the long run in later in the week. I'm not sure when in the day I'll run tomorrow, but knowing me it will most likely be mid-day, which means I need to sleep a lot tonight and hydrate a lot tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.

Saturday I'm running a race in the park, 4 miles. Assuming that my long run goes well tomorrow and that I'm feeling good after Friday's day off, I plan on going for a sub 30 min time . . . this would correspond to a sub 7:30 pace. We'll see!