Where, Oh Where is my Motivation?

To the tune of 'where, o where has my little dog gone'....

Okay, really poor start, but you catch my drift. Well, yesterday I ran.. 3.25 miles. I ran to the local Sunoco to pick up my car. Today, I was going to do the same thing to drop off a car (we tend to do all of our maintenance at once... go figure), but it turns out we didn't need to drop the car off, and for some reason, my entire motivation ended at that split second. I then ended up watching 'Little House on the Prairie' on the Hallmark Channel for an hour, but that's another story :)

Anyway, one run this week (but it's only Monday). Check back to see if I run again!!

Long time no see

Okay, my last post was on Sept 15. Today is Sept 27. Wow... long time since a run!

Last week, I put in 74 hours in 5 days (no weekend work, which made each week day that much longer!) Anyway, due to my increased work time, I didn't run.

This week, I think I was trying to re-balance myself... plus, I really didn't have the motivation to run. I don't know why. Every morning (well, nearly every morning) my alarm would go off; I would think of a lame excuse to go back to sleep, and then I'd wake up with just enough time to go to work. Evening runs had all sorts of excuses as well.

Today, since I had to drop the car off at the service station, I decided to wake up early, drive the car in, and run the 3-ish miles home. It gave me a good excuse to run. Now, I ran at a pretty slow pace (9:40 mile), but at least I ran. It's a start :)

No run today

I didn't run today. Two reasons: 1) I was sore from yesterday's yard work. I had to hack, and ax, and pull tree roots out. It took about 4 hours to do this, and it was mighty hot yesterday. I must've drank about 80 oz of water during this. Needless to say, I was a bit sore today. 2) I had to be at office at 7:00 am (today and all week). Not sure how this will impact my running (more than today, that is).

In Search of a Title

Okay, I ran today... 8 miles, 9:14 pace. Although I kept my goal of slow and easy runs this week, today, being Saturday, and the fact that I waited until daylight to run, there were several other runners out there. Usually, I'm the only one there, or at most, I see 1 other person, and they are usually going the other way. Today, one person passed me as if I was standing still, and when I turned onto Fairfax County Parkway to run the bulk of my run, there were several runners ahead of me, and they kept getting further and further away. Part of me wanted to increase my pace (I guess that was the competitive part of me), and it took considerable willpower to ease back up on my pace to keep to my slow and easy goal. Whew. I'm not sure I would have caught up with them anyway.. they were bookin' :)

Anyway, I got 8 in and it was kinda slow. On the other hand, it was 70 degrees and already very muggy. I drank a full 20 oz of water during my run (I usually drink 1/2 that), and I finished up the water just as I finished the run (meaning that if I had another mile to run, I would have been bone dry -- but sweaty).

Okay, the week is over, and I have 24.87 miles in. Next week's mileage is iffy right now, as I need to be at work at 7 am each day (yikes). That means an hour earlier each day than what I have been doing. We'll see how my runs go....

Keep On Keepin' On

Well, I managed to get up, lace up my shoes (really! these particular shoes have laces, as opposed to every single other pair of shoes with shoelace replacements), get a banana and glass of water, and run outside for 4.12 miles. And I managed to do it in a whopping 9:28 mile pace.

In actuality, I met my goal. This week, I said that I would run 4-ish miles every day and keep the pace slow. Since I sorta injured myself last week, I didn't want to re-injure myself by jumping the miles for pace up too fast. Hopefully, tomorrow I can get 8 or so in to call it a 24-mile week (again, counting chickens...) However, since tomorrow is Saturday, I have a good chance of doing it!

Keep on Truckin'

Okay, not quite the same thing.. but I have run 3 days in a row now. I didn't post yesterday, but I ran 4.3 miles, no time. I ran 4.04 miles at a 9:16 pace today (as you can guess, I had my GPS on today). I ran the neighborhood loop and had guessed that it was 4.1 miles, but wanted to be sure. Not sure where the .06 miles went though....

Anyway, the pain in my right hip flexor doesn't seem to be coming back. Tomorrow, I want to run 4-ish again (not sure of the route though, as I have gone through all the 4-ish routes around my house lately). On Saturday, I'd love to run 8... but don't want to count my chickens....

Explanation

In the last post, I mentioned increasing my mileage 10-20% each week, with no explanation. I actually got tired of typing, as I was leaning over the computer, afraid to sit down on the chair, as I was entering the blog right after my run.. Since it was 69 degrees and a little muggy outside, I was quite sweaty (TMI, I know). Anyway, here's my weekly mileage for the past several weeks. I'm trying to see if is there a correlation between my mileage and my injury, or if it's due to a treadmill workout:

Week of: Mileage
7/27: 24
8/3: 24
8/10: 17
8/17: 26
8/24: 30
8/31: 10


I increased my mileage about 20% from the week of 8/17 to 8/24. The latter week, I also did a 12 mile long run. I think that maybe treadmill running causes a slightly different gait, and that, combined with a 20+% increase in mileage, including a 12 mile run, created the injury. Hmmm... I'm going to need to think about this. I do prefer running outside, but don't want to remove treadmill running as an option, especially over the weekend....

First run

First run in several days. Since last Wednesday to be precise. Whew. I hurt my right hip flexor last week, probably doing something on the treadmill. I hobbled around for a few days and decided against running on it, as it hurt when I walked. Anyway, yesterday, it hardly hurt at all walking so I decided to do a nice, slow, and easy run today. 4.4 miles, no time, but probably close to a 10 min/mile. I wanted to run slow and easy to avoid re-injuring my hip.

I guess I should stick to a 10-20% increase per week, huh? I've been all over the place with my weekly mileage, but I think I should keep it at 20-25 for awhile before trying to increase it.

Ouch

Dunno what I did the other day, but I think it had something to do with the treadmill. You know my issue with my hip flexor, right? Well, I did something to it. Last night, it hurt like the dickens when I walked, and today, it still hurts. The thing is, it isn't constant. Sometimes there's no pain, sometimes there's a lot. That may imply that it's nerve-based, not muscle-based, or, on the other hand, I don't know what I'm talking about. Couldn't run today, and not sure about tomorrow....

Treadmill??

Okay, I blew it yesterday morning and didn't wake to run (I did, however, end up waking up, so that's good!) I ended up running on the treadmill last night. If anyone knows me, they know how difficult it is for me to run 1/2 mile on a treadmill, much less for 1 hour. However, I persevered, along with my iPod, to slog it out for 60 minutes. My pace was very slow for the time though -- 10:23, or 5:68 miles. But, I did run!

I need to figure out the programs better on the treadmill, or figure out some other workouts. I had the target speed at 7 mph, or 8:30 pace. However, it took 27 minutes to get to that pace. I sneaked the mph faster occasionally, making it more of a Fartlek run at times, but still. I think that if I want to continue to run on the treadmill on a regular basis, I need to set up my own programs.