What Was I Thinking?

Yes, I know many of you have asked that anyway, but that's what I was thinking as I was doing today's workout. What was I thinking - signing up for two big events that take place in early fall. That means that as the temps rise my mileage and intensity increase. And the longest mileage will take place in the hotest month. Uggghhhh! I was dying today.

Let me back up first of all. After doing Danskin Sunday, I figured I'd at least swim on Monday. Swimming can be a great recovery workout and even thought I wasn't sore, swimming sounded good. I did an easy 2,000 meter swim with some drills thrown in. I took my own sweet time. When I got home, I ate dinner. Then when my son left for soccer practice, I took off for a 4 mile run with hill repeats. I've mentioned before that there is a great hill just around the corner from my house. I ran a mile route to get there and then ran up and down the hill four times. Then I ran easy until I hit four miles. At 7:30 at night, the heat wasn't too terrible.

Tuesday I was planning on doing yoga and then an easy 3 mile run. After yoga, I just didn't feel like running and decided to ditch the run. I justified it by saying that it was my day off after Danskin.

Today was a weird day. My husband was suppose to go to Dallas for business which meant my workout would have to be done around the kids. But at 5:00 this morning, the guy he was going to help in Dallas called and told him not to come. And that meant that I could go to track practice tonight with Team in Training. Since I live north and work way south, when I have track practice, I usually get my husband to get the kids and just stay south instead of fighting all the traffic. So this morning I gathered my biking and my running gear. I loaded my bike on my car and headed off.

After work I headed to the veloway. It's a nice loop a little over three miles and only traffic on wheels is allowed (bikes and roller bladers, but no foot traffic). I ended up doing 5 loops for 15.58 miles. And I about died when I got off my bike. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I don't do well in heat. I had taken water on the bike but the problem is that I had no ice at the office and so by the end of the ride, the water was hot. It didn't even feel good when I squirted it on my head. I grabbed the small gatorade bottle I had in the car and drank some of that and ate my Lara bar to get some energy back. Then I loaded up everything and headed to the track.

Once the team had gathered we did a few laps to warmup and then we did some drills (side-to-side, grapevine, butt kicks, high knees, backward running). And then it was time for the speed work. Tonight was straights and curves. What this means is that on the straight part of the track you run fast. Not an all out sprint, but fast enough that you cannot carry on a casual conversation. On the curves, you recover. We did 8 laps. On the first three, I was able to run fairly fast on the straights and jog the curves. The fourth lap did me in. I could still do a decent "sprint" on the straights, but I ended up walking the curves. Then we did a cool down and then came the fun stuff - core work. We did 3 sets of 15 of the following: push ups, crunches, toe touches (I don't remember what they are really called), and then 3 times we held the plank for 30 seconds. It seems like there was something else, but I can't remember right now. The heat must have gotten to me :)

By this time I was starving, so I made a pit stop at Taco Bell on my way home. A little protein from a bean burrito never hurt a runner did it? And when I got home I promptly added a coke to drink. I don't drink a lot of coke, but there's nothing that tastes better in my opinion after a long or hard workout in the heat than a nice cold coke. And I don't mean diet or caffeine free - I mean full leaded coke. I won't be able to get to sleep tonight, but that's another story. It hit the spot with dinner.

It may be a tough summer, but come October, it will all be worth it.