four things friday
1. After the unmitigated disaster of last week, I feel like I should get a big gold star for the past four days. Not only have I completed every minute of each workout I've had scheduled, I have captured the living shit out of the spirit of the session. I was patting myself on the back last night about it and then realized that until my life went off a cliff and deep into the land of crazy, this was normal for me (completing workouts without a lot of fanfare). Normal. Right. But it sure does make me feel content to see all those Training Peaks boxes turn green.
I am laughing, though (again at myself), because it only took a month of the "do whatever I want" schedule for me to completely forget what it feels like to be the tiniest bit tired. I did some of the fastest running I've done in months on Tuesday and my quads and hamstrings are STILL sore, to the point where I was noticing my quads in the pool on Wednesday and bending over to touch my toes feel like brilliantly unwinding. The flip side is that I've slept better the past few nights than I have since I was peaking for ironman training. I'll take it.
2. Speaking of fast running, I'm hesitant to say that my magical asthma drugs are kicking in already, but the long run I did yesterday morning was a whole different world than the one I did on Sunday. I ran up the gentle-but-steady incline of the W&OD trail from my house to Falls Church and expected to be cranky about the uphill, the heat, the humidity at 6am, the bugs, the sweat, the wedgie my shorts were giving me, all of it. But instead I felt happier than I've felt on a run in months. I did zero walking, ran faster, kept my heart rate lower and was smiling when it was over. The doctor told me it would take 10-14 days for the drugs to start working (although he did say it's different for everyone). Placebo effect? Maybe, but if so, I don't care. It's so nice to be able to run longer than two miles without choking and walking and throwing a major hissy fit. It was still on the "slower" side of what is normal for me at that heart rate in the non-summer months but the improvement from the last run was so significant that I'm shocked. My doctor also gets a big fat gold star, and I get a smack on the nose for not getting tested two years ago when this crap started.
3. I've completely forgotten how to function in a world where I spend more than two hours a day away from my own kitchen. Now that I actually have to GO to work, I somehow have to figure out how to pack enough food to sustain myself for the eight hours I am gone. I realized that this sounds like the overprivileged whining of someone who has been lucky enough to work from home since 2009, but I packed WAY more food than I thought I would need on Wednesday...and had eaten it all after about five hours. I'm trying to not resort to living on Clif bars and bananas, so I'm going to be working on packing full (balanced?) meals and eating enough before I head out in the morning. Like a grown-up would do. What do you people eat all day?
4. It's been a while since I've posted some puppy pics. For shame.
Have a great weekend, everyone! Let me know if you are racing so I can cheer for you with my much-less-icky lungs!
I am laughing, though (again at myself), because it only took a month of the "do whatever I want" schedule for me to completely forget what it feels like to be the tiniest bit tired. I did some of the fastest running I've done in months on Tuesday and my quads and hamstrings are STILL sore, to the point where I was noticing my quads in the pool on Wednesday and bending over to touch my toes feel like brilliantly unwinding. The flip side is that I've slept better the past few nights than I have since I was peaking for ironman training. I'll take it.
2. Speaking of fast running, I'm hesitant to say that my magical asthma drugs are kicking in already, but the long run I did yesterday morning was a whole different world than the one I did on Sunday. I ran up the gentle-but-steady incline of the W&OD trail from my house to Falls Church and expected to be cranky about the uphill, the heat, the humidity at 6am, the bugs, the sweat, the wedgie my shorts were giving me, all of it. But instead I felt happier than I've felt on a run in months. I did zero walking, ran faster, kept my heart rate lower and was smiling when it was over. The doctor told me it would take 10-14 days for the drugs to start working (although he did say it's different for everyone). Placebo effect? Maybe, but if so, I don't care. It's so nice to be able to run longer than two miles without choking and walking and throwing a major hissy fit. It was still on the "slower" side of what is normal for me at that heart rate in the non-summer months but the improvement from the last run was so significant that I'm shocked. My doctor also gets a big fat gold star, and I get a smack on the nose for not getting tested two years ago when this crap started.
3. I've completely forgotten how to function in a world where I spend more than two hours a day away from my own kitchen. Now that I actually have to GO to work, I somehow have to figure out how to pack enough food to sustain myself for the eight hours I am gone. I realized that this sounds like the overprivileged whining of someone who has been lucky enough to work from home since 2009, but I packed WAY more food than I thought I would need on Wednesday...and had eaten it all after about five hours. I'm trying to not resort to living on Clif bars and bananas, so I'm going to be working on packing full (balanced?) meals and eating enough before I head out in the morning. Like a grown-up would do. What do you people eat all day?
4. It's been a while since I've posted some puppy pics. For shame.
