8/17

So on Monday night I was working until midnight on my courses for fall (they just made the sites available at 7 pm Monday, hence why I waited until the last week before the semester starts to do it...).  And then I was worrying about things and fell asleep at 2 am, and Luke woke up for the day at 6, and I spent the next hour groggily hoping that he would go back to sleep.  In other words, I didn't get up early to run Tuesday like I was planning to. 

Then I spent Tuesday afternoon during naptime working on my website again, and the same thing at night--I finished around 10 pm and Neil told me to just go to bed instead of running (too bad I didn't fall asleep until 12:30; I should have just run anyway).  I was so stressed about not running and trying to work out if I could run Thursday instead of taking a rest day, etc.

Anyway, so I finally did get to run today and boy was it a tough one...I keep beating myself up mentally about my times, comparing them to last year when I'd been running 25 miles a week all summer (although at this time last year I was pregnant and still putting up pretty good times...aaah, the self-beating-up continues).  Anyway. 

9x400-meter repeats today, except I wasn't running them on a track so I just ran 2 minute intervals, which means that my "fast" pace was going longer than 400 meters.  It was not the best run for me today.

I ran the first three at 7:30 pace out and 8:20 back (I think I ran the first one back a little slower but then I bumped it up).  Then Luke started screaming so I gave him his pacifier and ran another 2 at 7:30/8:20.  Then he started screaming like CRAZY so I put him in his bouncy seat and ran another 2 at 7:30/8:20 and I started getting the worst side ache, and I do NOT get side aches.  I can tell you when I had the last one--mile 8 of my first half-marathon in April 2010 running up the biggest hill I've ever run in my life.  And that's the only one I can remember since I ran a cross-country training run too fast in 7th grade.

I digress.  Side ache really bad, and I wanted to stop sooo bad, but I finished out the repeat, and then slowed down to 8:00 out/8:20 back.  Then it sort of gets hazy because I was playing mind games with myself trying to finish out the last repeat and I ran at 8:12 for a minute, then 8:06 for 30 seconds, then finally up to my 8:00/pace for a minute, then it was the "back" and I slowed it down to 8:06, then realized I really wanted to finish in less than 36 minutes so I went back to 8:00 and finished there.  The treadmill didn't flip over to the mileage until 36:09 (it alternates between showing speed and mileage) but I'm just going to call it at 36.

4.5 miles; 9x400 repeats; avg. pace 8:00/mile.

this might be the longest training log post ever.