Training Diaries: Week 6

Monday: I had planned on doing my circuit when I got home from work, but I actually listened to my body for once and took the day off after work. My feet, ankles, and legs were pretty swollen. This is a common side effect of a long run and one I deal with often. Bailey took the day off too. We were both pretty wrecked after our weekend. I honestly see Monday being our new off day. It will only get harder from here, and our bodies are ready for rest after weekend training. I fell asleep at 9:30...even more proof how tired I was.

Tuesday: I just had 3 miles, and I did it when I got home around 7:30 inside. We have had a lot of rain and storming, which I don’t mind. I will never be one who says I enjoy thunder storms, but I like that the weather has been cooler, it makes our runs a little more enjoyable. I ran my 3 miles in a little over 24 minutes, which is around 8:10 mile pace. I try to run pretty fast when I am on the treadmill. I know it’s a lot easier than running outside, so I try to make it more challenging and bump up the speed the whole time I run. It might also be on the fast side because I was so ready to be home after a long day of work and driving. I guess that’s a perk of 12 hour days, you run faster because you are so tired and hungry. Gotta look on the bright side of things. I will be running sub 20 minute 5Ks in no time haha

Wednesday: My original thought process was to get up before work and get my upper body workout over with. But…..I love to sleep and I didn’t get to bed as soon as I wanted to, and I will always choose sleep. It is not over rated, your body needs it to recover. I would sleep 10 hours a night if I could. My mom just bought be a bunch of dumbbells, so now I have heavy enough weight to get a really good upper body workout in at home. That’s what I am going to do tonight at around 8:00. Then eat a late dinner and hit the sack by 10:00. I will try to foam roll after my upper body workout if I have the energy.

Thursday: Bailey and I are going a little out of the box today after work today and doing are creative treadmill work out when we both get off work. We put the incline on the highest level and do certain moves front, side, back, and then other side for a minute. After you sprint for 1 minute on the incline (which is really really hard), and finally you put the incline back down and run a 400 as fast as you can. You do that until you reach 3 miles. Prepare to be dead. It is so exhausting, and it uses a lot of muscles in different ways than normal. Welp, we didn’t do it, we didn’t do this workout, so you should. I got home from work and was too tired and hurt-y, so YOLO. My legs were really swollen and I felt like it would be more beneficial to rest, and so did Bailey. It’s also technically Friday in the work week!

Friday: Bailey and I did our 7 miler today and it was easy peasy. I am going to assume that it probably helped that we had yesterday off. We ran it really fast, and it was pretty hot. At one point I looked down and my watch said we were running 7:30 pace…which is stupid! We are training for an ultra marathon, not a 5k. Sometimes we just get going though, and we just start running away from the problems of the world. Somehow running until you feel like you are going to puke makes your problems seem small. It doesn’t make sense, but I would say most runners would agree with me. We hit the hay at around 9:45 so we would be rested for our run in the morning.

Progress picture. Took this after 4 meals about 2 gallons of water.

Saturday: This is our longest run of this training program. Friday night I calculated how much Gu, S-caps, and Nuun I would need, and on Saturday at around 8:45 we got going. We always start late…we need to get better, but sleep is so nice and it helps you recover, so all is well. Side note: that is one of my favorite things about Bailey being my training partner. We always get our runs in and we usually negative split our long runs and we don’t stress. Which is hard for me not to do, but we just run. It’s nice to listen to your body and not put pressure on a long run. We push ourselves, but we never compete with each other so every run is very harmonious. Okay, back to our run. We had 16 miles and it was probably one of the best long runs we have had so far. I’m not going to say we weren’t tired, but we felt so good. I think a really huge part of it was the fact that we fueled properly (3 Gu’s, 2 Nuuns, and 3 S-caps each). We didn’t let our tanks get on E before we re-fueled and that made a huge difference. Our only minor problems were some blisters and toenail issues, which we stopped and fixed at around mile 11. It was another successful day, and a great way to celebrate our countries freedom! Running is the most empowering thing I have ever done for myself, and on days where my body allows me to do what I want I am so grateful for that. More grateful than I can even put into words. Everyone has a different definition of what its like to really “live”, well this is mine. I want to feel every muscle in my body burn and ache, because at least I can feel them and appreciate what they can do. After our run, I went straight home and took an ice bath, and ended up taking a 3 hour nap. Although our run felt good, I was still super tired after it was over, and all I could think about was sleeping.

A panorama of the Cincinnati skyline on the 4th!

Sunday: We took another off day. This week was a little weird for our rest days, but this is the first time I can remember ever waking up after a long run and feeling great. I have a really busy day preparing for the very long work week ahead. I am also going to vow to take better care of my body in the recovery stages of exercise. This means foam rolling every day, rolling my feet, and ice baths. I can train as hard as I can, but if I don’t take care of my body in between my runs, I am not going to make it to my race. So this is going to become a huge priority, because I am not going to waste all of this hard work.

Extras:

-It’s my first full week of work, and it’s still only 4 days!!! Yay! What a good way to start working in the big girl world.

-I have figured out that I now have about -10 hours of free time a day. I am having 14 hour days because I am driving so much right now. I am moving in August, so it will be better then. So I am trying to be relaxed about it, although it hard. It’s not like I miss watching Netflix or anything, but I really miss my dog and I miss having time to eat haha

-I have started listening to audio books! I get so bored during a drive, I feel like my brain is going to explode….so audio books are a really good solution for me. I am excited to get caught up on some of my favorite book series.

-One of my good friends had a healthy baby boy this on Thursday! Taylor is my oldest friend, and it’s so weird that she just had her first baby!

-I have been having a lot of problems with my lower leg all through this training program and it has started to really hurt when I run, especially my Achilles, which is not an injury I want to deal with. I went to my Chiropractor on Friday and I asked for his advice. Now I am doing a 3-step therapy on my feet so I can try to rehab my tendons and muscles in my feet and legs. I have been doing a little better with my active recovery, but it still needs a lot of work. Talking to him really reminded me how important it is to take care of my body, especially if you train it as hard as I do. He also adjusted probably 203/206 bones in my body! If you need a good chiropractor, I would recommend going to Dr. Tim Sargent in Maysville. He really does keep my whole family and me healthy. I go on a regular basis to stay healthy.

-I am really excited to move, mostly out of pure exhaustion and being on the road so much. I literally don’t have enough energy to move when I get home from work at around 8:00, and starting Monday I will be working until 7:00, so I will be getting home around 8:30. AKA Blaine has no life at all except: working and training (and eating the most convenient thing possible).

-My church is seriously my favorite place in the world. Every week is it is such a blessing to be a part of something that makes such a huge impact on our community. I leave there and my heart Is so full of God.

My mom sent me this this week. How appropriate?

Training Diary: Week 6