Late night easy run ...

Thursday - 3 miles

• 3.56 miles, 39' 50" minutes, 11' 11" min/mile average pace, 134 BPM average heart rate

Work has me so stressed out this week that I can't seem to get up in the morning when my alarm goes off. So even though my alarm went off at 6 AM (as usual), I didn't actually get out of bed until 7:15 except to turn the alarm off of course. I don't think that I am going to be able to wake up early at all this week. With that, I decided to just go into work early and try to have a really productive day. Work literally flew by today and before I knew is the clock on computer said it was 5. I continued working for another two hours before I headed over to my parents' house to look after their cats. When I finally got home, my sister had dinner ready to go so I ended up waiting even longer to get my run in.

At 10:30, I felt like my stomach had settled enough to go knock out my 3 mile run on the treadmill. As much as I enjoy doing my speed workouts, I didn't feel like doing one tonight. My week was shaping up to be just as long and stressful as I had predicted it would be. I even considered not running at all before a random thought popped into my head. There are a bunch of those signs at my local running store that say useful but random information. One of those signs popped into my head and I quickly changed into my running clothes.

"It can take 2 weeks to make up for 1 week of training missed."

Once I started running, I was amazed that I had ever considered missing  my run. My run tonight was nice and easy. After my walking warm up, I set the belt pace for 4.0 mph and I felt like I was on cruise control. Maybe that had to do with the fact that instead of listening to my workout music play list I decided to listen to one of my favorite audio books, "Born to Run". To me, this book is very inspiring and helped me decide how my overall nutrition would work. Now I am not a straight up vegetarian (nor am I saying that I never will be) but I have really switched from eating overly processed foods to eat eating a very large amount of vegetable and lean proteins. This book also helped me realize the importance of running mechanics and how one's stride should look to avoid injury. I am also considering trying out thin soled running shoes (not Vibram Five Fingers though) to help strengthen my foot muscles. After 40 minutes of running, I felt great and the book had successfully distracted me from the fact that I was running. I really do love running but as I get into the longer distances I end up looking for excuses that allow me to stop running and walk for a little bit, which doesn't really jive with my goal for my first half marathon race. I think I will try listening to an audio book during my long run on Saturday and see how that works.