I woke up Wednesday and my legs were really feeling the running from Monday and Tuesday, so I decided to call it a rest day. My calves, shins and quads were all super tight, and quads were a bit sore. Since the major goal of 2011 is no injuries I won't go for a run if my legs are already hurting or are super stiff, as I'm kind of prone to running injuries. Better to take a rest day and be able to run tomorrow than to run today and not be able to run for a week or two.
I then made the plan to wake up Thursday and go for a run in the morning. I use to be a super early morning person, but not sure what happened as I really have been struggling the last year to wake up at all in the mornings. Is it age? Change in diet? Change of stress levels? I don't know, but I'm going to get my morning workouts back! And yes. I woke up Thursday morning at 4:45am, ready to go, the alarm went off and I was ready. But again, my legs weren't so happy with that idea. So I decided I would run after work instead. But I didn't go back to sleep. I need to get use to this waking up early thing, so I stayed awake and puttered around the house to keep myself awake and get ready for the day.
After work I did run. My legs were feeling a bit better, just a bit heavy at this point, but better. I headed out to Memorial Park and headed out for the run. I did the three miles in just over 27 minutes. Still really slow for me. But there was lots of walking involved, which means I was probably starting off way too fast, since it's just over 9 minute miles with long walking periods mixed in. I need to get better at pacing myself, more on this in a bit. I also started to have some breathing issues. It was hard to breath out there for some reason, and it's been a long time since I've had asthma issues while running.
I've had asthma since I was two. Before it was cool to have it, I'm a trend setter like that you know? And I never had a daily medicine, just emergency inhalers growing up. Several years ago, I got put on some daily meds and it helped quite a bit, but I stopped with it last year due to needing new prescriptions and needing to find a new doctor. Unfortunately, my current medical insurance really sucks and so it's expensive to go to doctors and such. But I know if I want to make the most of this athletic stuff, I really need to get my lungs under control. So, I will be looking for a good doctor for that, and see what I can do to get all that dealt with.
After the run, I was still having some breathing issues and coughing a bit. Today, I wake up in a similar state, and I'm now worried I'm getting sick. Hopefully I can fend this off quickly and keep moving forward.
Back to the pacing issues. From the people that I know, it seems like when they are running, they find a groove and just start running with it, and know what their pace is. Everyone has a built in
metronome I believe. This allows them to keep beat with songs, create new beats, etc. I have a broken one. I struggle to keep beat in songs, which made it very hard for me to dance, but also makes it hard for me to keep a steady cadence when running and biking. Because of this, I wear myself out faster than I should. I start off too fast, too slow, change pace, speed up, slow down, all the while trying to find that sweet spot where I can just go forever.
When I was really consistently training I was closer to having it figured out, but after a couple of years of no consistent training, I've totally lost my cadence keeper. Now I am struggling to refind it, which is why I think I also don't like running. It just wears me out too fast. I think if I can find my pace, I can then not worry about what's going on and just get into a zone and go. Yes. I think this is why I don't like running.
But enough of that, and this morning I woke up feeling not too bad. I probably could have gone for a run but had to get to work early since I'm leaving work early to go camping this weekend. So, I don't see myself hitting my 5 runs this week, but I'm OK with that. It's an over all goal of 2011, not a goal of the first week of the new year! As long as I can mange to hit that goal for the majority of the year, it will be a successful year for this goal.
