it's not always gonna be easy

Sometimes, I feel like I just don't have a clue. Yesterday I woke up and felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my entire body. My legs were sore, my foot was sore, my knee hurt, and my back was killing me. I assumed that it was most likely related to the 19 miles that I did in the late afternoon the day before. Normally, I do these big distance days in the morning and then have all day to recover from them. That didn't happen on Tuesday so I figured maybe just going to bed still tight from the run caused some problems. I was able to go out and do 7 very slow miles during the day, and I did feel slightly better when I was done, but I still didn't feel good.

I was hoping I would wake up this morning feeling rejuvenated after yesterday's easy day, but it didn't happen. I didn't sleep all that great last night. My lower back is continuing to give me fits which make sleeping very uncomfortable and the humid weather isn't helping much either. So this morning when the alarm went off in my head to get up at 5:30, it just wasn’t happening. I finally dragged myself out of bed around 6:15 which gave me enough time to grab a train half-way into work and do 11 miles on the way in. I brought my watch with the hopes that I would be able to talk myself into doing something that included some faster running.

The first couple of miles felt horrible and I really just wanted the run to end. The temps lately haven't been all that bad, but the humidity has just been crazy. If you just go outside and stand there, it seems like it's not too bad, but when you actually start doing something, you get very wet, very quickly. Kind of disgusting, I know. Anyway, there is a point on the lakefront trail on the way into work where there is a 4 mile stretch of well-marked path where I normally do my tempo portion of the run. As I was approaching the first marker, I was still debating with myself whether I should go for it or just go easy the rest of the way. Finally, I figured that you can't only run fast when you feel like it. Sometimes, you just have to go, regardless of how your body feels. So I went.

I came through the first mile in 5:48, and it felt OK. I was under control and felt like I could maintain it. The second mile was almost identical to the first and my two mile split was 11:37. I have a goal that I want to finish these tempo runs faster than I started them, just to prove that I'm not burning myself out on them. I have a bad habit of doing that sometimes. The third mile came in at 5:42 and the last mile was an identical 5:42. So overall for the 4 miles of tempo the pace was 5:45. I was pretty happy with that considering how I felt beforehand and the overall conditions of the day. My shorts where absolutely soaked when I was finished. It looked like I went swimming in the lake not running at it. What I was most pleased with about this whole run was the recovery afterwards. I would say that after about 30 seconds of jogging after the hard effort, I felt like I was almost back to a normal breathing pattern and my legs felt good again.

So standard thinking would tell me that if my foot, knee, and back are all hurting me, and my legs are sore, I should take it easy. However, in practice, I'm learning that sometimes a good hard effort will help snap you out of a funk and those little nagging things just don't seem so bad when you actually feel like your accomplishing something. Sometimes you just have to force your body to move when it doesn't feel like moving. OK. I get it. Mental note taken.

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Just figured I update this with the afternoon run. Things felt much better. I cruised through 9 miles feeling pretty good the entire time. It is getting hot out there with the temps in the mid 80's and extremely humid. I guess that's good as the Twilight 5K that I will be running in on Saturday is looking at temps in the mid 90's and high humidity. Oh the humanity.