First full week of school.
The heat and humidity is back with a vengeance.
The weekly mileage is creeping up.
My runs were hodge-podge but I did get all my miles in but could not get in any lunchtime bootcamp this week.

Tuesday:

I think I had a good tempo interval speed workout. Definitely made me work at it!! It was exhilarating to actually get it done.

Wednesday:

Tuesday night, my 13yo and me had a huge spat so I didn’t want to go off in the morning of Wednesday without talking to her. That meant no time to get my run in 🙁 But I figured that if there was ever a case for missing a run, this would fall under it.

Friday:

I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t run outside in the morning. Maybe I procrastinated getting out of bed because I knew that I had a big chunk of free time in the day and there was always the office treadmill to hit at that time. But as Murphy’s law would have it, I got a last minute meeting invite while running, so I had to jump off 15-20 minutes before.

Saturday:

I started Saturday’s long run with all intentions of going the whole 3 hours. I had planned to meet up with a group at 5:30am and finish before the sun got too high. I woke up at 4:10 since I had to leave at 4:45am to get to the meeting place 10 minutes before. But I was still half asleep and after actually falling asleep at a signal, I turned back home and went back to bed. I slept in until 7am and woke up refreshed! With a late start I thought I would be struggling pretty quickly. But I was running surprisingly easy after my initial 5 mile loop and when I finished 8 miles, I was still feeling easy and was excited that this might be the elusive strong long run that I’ve been looking for. 

But then my husband calls me telling me that I had to go pick up the kids from class at 10am because he was going to go run. Ugh!!! This is what I get for sleeping in – our usual practice is that I get my run in insanely early and he drops the kids off and heads out for his run while I pick them up and bring them home.

I contemplated bringing them to my running path with me and maybe have some bike/run company for the hour. But typical kids procrastinated until it was 11am (!!!) I gave up on trying to fit the run in that day. 

Sunday:

Take 2 of the long run. I wasn’t sure if I could run all the 3 hrs since the previous day was almost 2 hrs long and the heat & humidity seemed worse – if that could be possible!! Started about 40 min later than planned, oh well … As soon as I started running, I could feel the difference in the 2 days. The level of heavy breathing was higher even though my legs felt fine. I didn’t feel as strong after the 5 mile loop, but then I didn’t expect to either. And as long as my legs felt fine, I could go on. I was trying to keep deliberately easy and steady. I did another 4 miles before feeling like I hit the wall and turned back to finish around 10 miles and with still 30 minutes of running to do. The last of these miles felt more junk than steady, so I was wondering if I should call it a day and instead just walk in the last 30 minutes rather than the 1min:30 seconds intervals I was doing. 

Thankfully, there was a group running and one of them was struggling too and someone suggested that we run together. We both took (rather a long time by the looks of it!) time to eat, hydrate and stretch before heading out for the 30 minutes and surprisingly ran very well together. She persuaded me to come back to the world of long distance triathlons after my 6 star quest and I persuaded her to do my first ultra with me. This is how awesomely bad decisions are made – when you are tired and half delirious from the heat and have crazy partners to run with! 

The amount of water I must’ve drunk on the run!! I was ready with ice for water and ice packets for the body. But I was going through the water crazy – my 2 x 8oz bottles were only lasting me 2 miles, I had to refill every 1.5 miles (the flat gravel loop is 1.5 miles from parking lot to parking lot). And I wasn’t feeling sloshy either. A super sweet 3 year from the Atlanta Tri Club mixed a cocktail of gatorade and water which is what I had in me when I went back for the 30min.