Long Weekend + Holiday Blog Dump

Thursday
I planned a rest day for today since the last three days have been so tough and tomorrow I would be switching to a morning workout. So I ended up mowing 2/3 of the yard and that went well. I would have done the whole thing, but the grass is still suffering from our drought in the other 1/3 of the yard. I wasn't winded at all like I used to get and my head was the only thing that got overly sweaty.

Friday
I dialed back my workout today like I had previously mentioned. I went with the 90 seconds walk and 90 seconds run, I ended up modifying a couple of the segments to be 2:00 minutes running and 1:00 minute walking to make a total of 16:00 minutes running out of 30:00 minutes total. I really didn't want to do this, but the past few days have been so difficult that I had to do something. It turned out that this was exactly what I needed. I felt great afterwards and that is the best birthday present I could give myself. Did I mention that today was my birthday? Also my wife got me some running socks and a couple compression dri-fit T-shirts. The T-shirt was very tight, but that is supposed to be how it fits. As I started running I thought it was odd that my head felt so hot, it took a few minutes to realize that it wasn't that my head was hot, it was that my body was colder. As I said before the run was good, my legs didn't hurt at all. They did tighten up about the 21:00 mark, but that went away in the next 90 second walk break. The only thing that wasn't completely perfect was my feet hurt. It is probably time for some fitted running shoes. I have been doing all my running on a pair of Adidas Ozweego running shoes that felt comfortable for walking about 6 months ago when I bought them to be my everyday shoes.

Saturday
Couldn't get up early enough to get a morning run in, but luckily some time opened up later in the day. Another good 16 of 30 minuter, felt really strong throughout. My feet hurt about the same as yesterday, but I am mentally strong enough at this point to ignore it until I can get some new shoes. I used my new mp3 player that I got from my mom for my birthday yesterday. It is a Creative Zen Stone Plus. It's smaller in size and capacity than my 20 gb Creative that I've been using, but I will be able to use it for outside running. As an added bonus it has a stopwatch on it so that should be helpful until I can save up enough for a Garmin.

Sunday
I was feeling a little lethargic today and NBC was playing some of the Track and Field World Championship footage from the past week. They had the womens marathon on, absolutely incredible! I swear at the half way those women were averaging 6 minute miles. It turned out to be a pretty motivating thing to watch, cause after I saw the Kenyan win I headed right down stairs to do my run/walking. I ran a little longer today at 16:30 for 30:00. The pain in both feet was still there, but at this point I expect it to be there until I get new shoes. I don't suspect it to be an injury of any kind because it only shows up after 7-10 minutes of working out and it's gone by about 10 minutes after.

Monday
I kept up the 16:30 pace today. I've been working the numbers lately and boy is it confusing. If I stick to 90 second walk breaks and up all of my running to 2:00 each I end up with 4:00 left over and only 16:00 of running. Before I ran today I thought I might step up again, but after all the math I just decided to do the same thing as yesterday. I look forward to the time when I will no longer have to time things out and I can just be a little more free to go run. I felt good and strong throughout. The foot pain took a little longer to start, but it's there as expected. I know I can't get to the running store Tuesday, but maybe Wednesday.