Overcast day, which makes me far more comfortable outside running in the summer. I was able to run at a decent, albeit easy pace without enviously eyeing benches and cool places in stranger's front lawns to lie down. This always makes me happy. Wrapped up my run with 21 minutes of core strengthening.
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Gray skies and dirt path
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Suns out. Guns out. I began this run in dread, as is typical when it is hot out. I suffered throughout, but decided to work on changing my mindset. Before I went on my run, I looked up the benefits of training in the heat and learned that when I'm training in the heat, I'm also increasing blood plasma and potentially increasing my V02 Max, I'm decreasing my heart rate and increasing oxygen consumption. I'm also making my goal fall races feel easy in comparison. I chose to think about all of these things every time it hurt instead of "how will I ever run fast again? This can't possibly be helpful. Maybe I am overtraining." Oh, I also looked up the difference between overtraining and hating to run in the heat and determined I'm just being a big baby. Although the heat is still my greatest running nemesis, I felt like I was better conquering that sweaty bastard.
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Still summer chugging
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All of that mental prep of the day before was totally forgotten and I was hot and whiny again. Also, I wore my hydration vest without a shirt and gave myself a lovely chaff scab this time (I don't know why that hasn't happened the 10 other time I did the same thing). I also decided on something new. Previously, it has been difficult to motivate myself to get on the bike for anything less than 10 miles, but knowing I would be gone for the weekend, I decided to just do what I could fit in before work and did a single loop around the local bike path. Finished up by doing a variety of planks and rushed to work as fast as I could.
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| This is the day I decided to write the haikus on the images |
I had more time before work today and decided to put in a bike ride as well. I have not done brick workouts as planned lately (as in bike first and then run like in an actual triathlon), because well, like everything... weather. I want to do the sweatiest workout first. All that sweat keeps me cool on the bike.
Friday: 8 easy miles and 4 fartleks (9 miles total)
I left for Vermont early on Friday and had to get it done at 5am. It was so hard to get out of bed and I did not leave enough time to do as many fartleks as I had planned or my strength routine, but I had a beautiful sunrise foggy run and could drive for 3 hours, knowing I put some quality work into my morning. I downloaded The Runner's World Podcast and listened to this during my drive.
Saturday: 19.3 miles of trail running at the Vermont 100
On Saturday, I spent the morning and afternoon crewing for Faith and Laura's 100k. I had met Faith's husband and other crew members the day before and we drove around and talked about running and races. It was awesome! Hanging with other runner-obsessed people is the best! After 5pm it got more awesome, because I paced Faith and Laura for 19.3 miles and climbed almost 3,000 feet of elevation. It was fantastic. There was almost no phone service and it was dark when my pacing was finished, so I never put this photo/haiku of my gross trail foot on my Instagram.
Sunday: Cycled 20.73 miles
I spent the early afternoon driving home and had also intended to run 4 miles, but after driving and biking, I was spent. I decided to let my body rest a little and watched the movie Cliffy with Mallory. We're going to download the Vermont 100 documentary when our attention spans are better.
The weekly breakdown:
Run: 57.59 miles
Bike: 39.57
Swim: 0
Strength: 1 hours and 23 minutes total
