Monday morning I dragged my suitcase up my front steps at 10:00am, so bone-deep exhausted I was almost sick with it.
I'd left DFW airport (Texas) at 7:00am central time; this meant setting an alarm for 4:00am, but it turns out you don't actually need an alarm when you're awake all night (like literally allll night, not even even a bit of light dozing). It's not that I didn't try to sleep but I often have a hard time sleeping when I have an early alarm, and unfortunately none of my usual tricks (melatonin, diphenhydramine, reading) were helping.
So yes. Up at 4:00am, out the door at 4:30, returning my rental car at 5:15, at the gate for my flight at 5:45. (It wasn't boarding until 6:30am so I was earlier than I needed to be, but that's because everything went perfectly and you can never count on everything going perfectly when air travel is involved.)
After ~3 hours of fitful airplane sleep, I touched down at SFO, took an Uber home, said hi to my cats, and tried (in vain) to get some real sleep on my couch. (My bed wasn't made and I was not not NOT in a place to make it. So, couch.)
I was desperately trying to get a nap in because the Texas trip had meant pushing my usual Sunday long run workout to Monday, and the idea of doing it on three hours of sleep was...not appealing. And, after how this last week had gone running wise, I *really* needed a win to get back on the horse, so to speak. I thought I'd been so smart scheduling my return flight for early morning on my day off; a whole day! A whole free day to unpack, rejuvenate a bit, and get the long run in.
It all started when I had a work meeting scheduled in *exactly* my usual strength work window (Tuesday morning) that I could neither move nor miss. I was able to move my strength session to Wednesday morning, but what I failed to take into account was that this meant doing a Wednesday track workout was probably not going to fly. If I'd been thinking ahead, I'd have swapped it with my Tuesday easy run, but I wasn't, so I didn't.
I did *try* to do the track workout (3 x [3 x (400m / 200m) / 3:00]) on Wednesday evening but realized after one very slow, painful interval that it would be a complete waste of time. (Imagine trying to do speed work in cement boots and you'll have the picture.) So I jogged back home for a total of 6.7 miles & started googling tracks near my mom's house. ("I'll do it on Friday!")
The next morning (Thursday) I flew to Texas, with the plan of running at least 6 miles on each of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Honestly I should have known better than to schedule running on Thursday; after fighting my way through metroplex rush hour traffic to get to my mom's house, I was kind of a mess and it was getting dark and all I wanted to do was eat, having not eaten since 7am California time, and then go to bed.
The rest of the days? All I can say is I can't remember the last time I've had so little motivation to put my shoes on and go outside. I felt so, so tired and the thought of running felt like just *the* most unpleasant activity I could imagine. Sometimes I can overcome feelings like that on my home turf but with the added logistics of hanging out with my family (which, after all, was why I was there), I did not have it in me.
And I didn't even have guilt about not having it in me, to be honest, which is quite unusual. Like somehow my body and mind were both giving me serious warning lights that I needed REST, like A LOT OF REST, both mental and physical. Like, "You can fight this if you want but it is not a good idea. Please, just lean into laziness, here. Embrace the rest." Like, "Unscheduled rest days? Multiple in a row? Yeah; we do that here. Deal with it."
I tell you this big long story mainly because there isn't much of a training log to share for last week and that's why. And, it's okay! It's fine, truly! Is it ideal, or the best possible way I could have spent those days? I don't know. I don't know how to know that and I'd be a bit skeptical of anyone who claimed they did.
However, I am now six days out from a race; the race is just a tune-up / fitness gauge kind of thing anyway, and sometimes you can feel when you're getting yourself into a little bit of a hole (even if it doesn't seem like you should be) and need to focus on rest and recovery more than shoehorning in one more workout or a few more miles.
Grand Total: 14.7 miles, all easy
Monday 2/13: Rest
Tuesday 2/14: 8 easy. Such heavy legs today! This run was a real slog but I got through it. (In retrospect, the signs of this bone-deep exhaustion were there even before the aborted track workout & travel stress, so maybe I shouldn't be that surprised at how the rest of the week shook out.)
Wednesday 2/15: 1 hour strength + 2.5 warm up, 3 [3 x (400m/200m) / 3:00 jog], 2.5 cool down = 9 total 6.7 easy.
Thursday 2/16-Sunday 2/19: NOTHING. 🦥
One more week to Victory Half, let's hope a bit of extra rest was just what I needed! 😅
🎧In my ears this week:🎧
- Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl. A few years after her boyfriend Jim mysteriously died their senior year of high school, Beatrice sheepishly reunites with the high school friend group she drifted apart from after Jim's death. The five narrowly escape a harrowing car accident together, only to find out that they actually did not narrowly escape the accident and are now caught in a "neverworld wake" -- a time loop in which they will all continue to re-experience the previous day until at least four of them can agree on which one of them should survive the car accident while the other four die.
- Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson. Lydia is a mediocre translator for the Logi, a species of extraterrestrials who have recently established a presence (complete with an embassy, ambassadors, and cultural attachés!) on earth. Alas translating to and from the Logi's unique "thought language" has the unfortunate side of effect of intoxicating the translator. Things get messy when Lydia blacks out one night from translating and wakes up to find the cultural attaché she translates for has been murdered in his study.
In Case You Missed It:
Victory Half Week 1 of 8Victory Half Week 2 of 8
Victory Half Week 3 of 8
Victory Half Week 4 of 8
No comments:
Post a Comment