Keepin It Real, One Mile at a Time: Week 9. Not the best week I've ever had.

Week 9

7/18: Rest

7/19: 3 miles, TM

7/20: 5 miles. TM

7/21: off

7/22: off

7/23: 14 miles, outside. w Mac. 10:06 pace

7/24: 6 miles, 8:57 pace. 1 CD mile. Solo outdoors. Weights.

Totals:

Miles- 29

Strength- 1

Rest- 3. Whoopsies

This week.

It suuuuuuuuucked.

I am pretty sure my body spent all week attempting to recover from Ragnar. It wasn't so much the miles I had put my body through as the lack of sleep. I felt like every night/ morning my body was fighting to earn back the sleep lost over the weekend but I was not refilling the bank fast enough. The two pathetic treadmill runs resulted in a whopping weekday mileage total of...8. I had an extra day of rest this week, which meant only 4 days to train. I was tired, bloated, lethargic and grumps. I was feeling pretty low about such a crappy week but then reminded myself that id rather have this week now, then closer to race day or, God forbid during the actual marathon.

So. Moving on.

Looking back, Saturday's 14 miler wasn't too bad, although around mile 8 I may have felt differently. Running w Mac is always so nice and easy breezy and the miles fly by, so that is the major bonus. But the miles are still hard.

And 14 miles is still 14 miles.

Federal Way is Hilllly! We came across a monster hill and we both decided to stop our watches and just walk. I think attempting to run it would have been pretty defeating, although getting started back up at the top was not easy either. My body had gone into temporary sleep mode so my legs were stiff for a qtr mile afterwards. Luckily, once we had a couple of miles left I think we both pepped up a bit which made the last 1.5 miles less painful.

A little.

Eyes on the prize.

Post run, We treated ourselves to some hard earned Starbucks. I hope the Starbucks employees and customers didn't mind us ordering our drinks with salt 'staches and sweat stains.

Sunday's run was supposed to be a recovery run but apparently I'm too stubborn and a little stupid to listen to good advice, because I decided to try and run a little faster than I should have. My first mile should have been an indicator of how i was feeling but my stubbornness got the better of me.

I gutted through 6 miles (full confess: I stopped more than a few times) and then slogged an extra mile to say I threw in a recovery mile. I know I know, doing it wrong.

New shorts. $6. Not the most flattering but very comfy.

Hammer time