It's a Struggle

It's been a pretty rough week so far. Following Tuesday's sub-par run, I woke up feeling pretty fresh on Wednesday. While this was a good sign, I kind of blew it because I wound up running my recovery run too fast. I ran twice on Wednesday, both without a watch, but the morning run was way too fast. The afternoon was at a more relaxed pace, but I was still feeling tired by the end of the day. To top things off, I had a 9:30 softball game on Wednesday that turned into a marathon due to the wind suddenly whipping up at gametime and blowing straight out. 45 runs later (26-19 final score), my legs hurt.

I woke up Thursday morning in no mood for a tempo run, so I ran a proper recovery run this time, clocking in at an average of 6:50 for the morning run and 7:00 minutes per mile for the 6 mile afternoon run. This was more of what I should have done on Wednesday. That left me with the option of doing a 5 mile tempo run this morning. I decided to kind of just get out there and see how I felt. When I saw the first mile pass in an effortless 6:40, I knew it was game on. I wound up averaging 5:45 for the tempo portion of the run and 6:01 total for the entire 9 miles. It was a nice lift to what has been a pretty bad week of running.

Part of it was probably caused by residual fatigue from last week, but I really don't think that was the major factor. I just really think that I don't get a long with humidity. The temps haven't been too bad the past two days, but the dewpoints are still climbing over 70 every day, turning every run into a steam bath. So for now, I'll just continue to push through the fatigue and deal with a bad run here or there. Hopefully I'll come out the other side a stronger runner.