Great Run Today

Here I am half asleep before I even had any coffee

Woke up at 5AM on the dot before the coffee pot went off, and didn't even bother to put clothes on--instead I donned my running clothes while waiting for coffee to finish, fixed breakfast (hard boiled egg on English muffin with some jam), organized a little bit, visited the bathroom, loaded up my gym bag with a can of Coke and bottle of Gatorade, and headed to the Y.

I was on the treadmill running at 6:02AM, and for the first :30 of the run, I almost wasn't fully awake, but my legs felt fine, since I was running in Z1, although I had to fend off a strong desire to puke since I had eaten so close to starting. The workout for today was this:

1:50 as 30' z1, 20' z2, 10' z4, 5' z2, 10' z4, 5' z2, 15' z3, 15' z2

The Z1 and Z2 stuff felt, indeed easy, and even the Z3. I like doing the Z4 stuff on the track, but today I kept it all to the treadmill so I wouldn't run too hard. Since I only took about a 30 second break after the first 1:05, because I wanted to just slide through the Z4 stuff, I was finished about 7:53AM. I had some chatting company for my last :30 in the name of my pilot friend, Chris.

The can of Coke lasted me for about 1:10--usually I'm done with it in under an hour, but my breakfast kept trying to come up on me so I was taking smaller sips. I can only handle Coke (fully fizzed!) to start when I run this early, as it seems to keep my stomach settled. Once I transition to outdoor long runs, I'll need to carry defizzed Coke so it doesn't escape the bottle while I'm bouncing around. It sucks, because I really prefer it fizzy. Oh well!

When I got off the treadmill, I realized that if I had planned better, I could have jumped in the pool for :30, which would have been a nice cool down, but I didn't have swim gear, so I decided to stay and stretch for a little bit, and still felt good, so I headed downstairs and knocked out 20 chinups, 75 pushups and 150 crunches in about 10'. I was originally going to skip that stuff today, but what the hell, I had some time, so I got it done.

I will do one more workout today which is to finish up my strength stuff , which should take about :35. That will set me up for only 2 workouts tomorrow--a 3300-yard swim and a :50 easy run.

One of the things I did this morning between getting up and arriving at the Y was to look at my long run progression to see when my first 2 hour run would be. I had things configured so that it wouldn't be for another 5 weeks, and I thought, what the fucking hell, I'm ready for it NOW! So I retooled things and will hold at 1:50 next week but then start in on the 2 hour runs in 2 weeks! Yee-haw! Unfortunately, it will still be darkness when I need to start them in order to get them done before work for the next 3-4 weeks, which means still on the treadmill, but that's OK--it will make the transition to outdoor long runs at my favorite place, Waterfall Glen, that much sweeter!

I am still processing huge amounts of stress and sadness for myself and one of my close friends, and you put that together with some pretty heavy duty training, and you can bet I'm a bit of a psychological mess, but I'm mostly holding it together. I'm starting to let my house cleanliness slide, but it was only a matter of time before the MESS showed up. I am rotating 3 pairs of running shoes and doing indoor and outdoor runs, so that means sunglasses, hats, tights, everything is getting used, and soon enough there will be bike and helmet and bike shoe rotations (although Bitch doesn't need to come out for about a month), and OMG the amount of bottles I am going through now is getting to be pretty spectacular.

Well now that I've got all this out of my system and I'm at work digging on that version of stress, I think I may need a little nappie-poo later or at least a lay down.