Recently I have been bad about running, even worse than I have been bad about writing (or not writing as the case may be!) This week I decided that I would get back into it. I had just bought some new clothes and I was realizing how tight they were.I decided I wanted to wear what I had bought for more than a few days. It really felt like I was ballooning up. I have found my typical pattern is I lose weight and gain a certain level of fitness. On the way to this point I am working hard, doing my running and stretching and what I call the 7:00 fast (no eating after 7). I seem to do really well doing this. I think the big thing is not eating at night for me. I think those calories really seem to stick to me. But the running is also a huge part of weight management for me so I was determined to not let this peak in fitness end and to try to continue it for as long as possible.
Armed with a commitment to run and the 7 o’clock fast I started out the week with a nothing spectacular junk run. My main goal was to just get out there and do it. I strapped on the water bottle and headed out the door. It was hot but I knew that would be the case and I had my water so I wasn’t too worried. It went fine. I managed my water intake by having sips every so often. Works well for dealing with the heat. I followed that with a recovery run and then an LSD run. The LSD (long slow distance) run was hard, but at only eight miles it wasn’t ridiculous and I went very slowly.
Today marked the fourth day in a row running. This has always been my hypothetical mark for when I feel like I have gotten back into running. Though I have only had a couple of low-mileage weeks and not a long break this seems to have done the trick. Running feels like a habit again. It doesn’t seem to matter how far you run, just that you do it for the four days in a row. I think I may make it five tomorrow! I hope I do cause I don’t see myself running this weekend, maybe some short easy ones. I have two shows to do this week with my swing band and I need to be focused for them. I find that if I run too hard (and just about any sort of hot run counts as “hard”) that I have trouble concentrating on teh notes I need to play and I get lost in the songs. Normally I don’t have this issue. So no or little running this weekend.
Today’s run was really hot like all of my runs this week. I finish up with the sweat pouring out of me. Just bucket loads. Takes me quite a while till I get to the point where I feel hydrated enough to return to normalcy. Today it took a large glass of Gatorade and a Nuun water but I feel much better. I went on a new route today, well more of a variation of an old route. I went down to the canyon and did the whole run twice end to end. It gets really humid down there in the wetland areas, but really it was only the north side of the canyon that was a scorcher and both sides have shade.
I am going to run (well hopefully) my first 5k next month, part of the course runs through the canyon. I am really curious to see how the race goes as the paths are really narrow. But they seem to think it will be ok. This is the first year they have done it, so maybe they will make changes for next year, or maybe not. However I do I will set a PR as it will be my first 5K. I am a bit worried about doing it as I have a show with my new band the night before, then a show with the swing band right after and then a birthday party right after that. Something is gonna have to give though I think I can actually fit it all together. We’ll see,