Dead Legs

Well hello again, blogosphere!  Haven't updated since Wednesday, so here we go!

Since I've been under the weather lately, I decided to give myself Thursday to just relax and rest up.  This proved to be a fortuitous decision as yesterday (Friday), I ended up walking for a little more than 3 hours as my husband and I went to the opening night of Universal's Halloween Horror Nights (HHN)!  Since this year marks the 21st year that HHN has been going on, the theme was Lady Luck:

A gem, ain't she?!

We had a great time as we were led through a tour of all of the haunted houses, scare zones and shows available.  Because we were with the media, we had access to the media lounge that had tons of delicious free food and beverages!  It was definitely a great time!  However, as we dragged our tired butts (and my very dead legs) into the house around 1 a.m., I kind of figured my run would be postponed to Sunday morning instead so I could get some sleep.  But, no!  I ended up waking up ridiculously early for some reason, so I went running this morning to get it out of the way for the weekend!  Yay me!

I don't know if not getting much sleep, being sick or all of the walking last night has anything to do with it, but today's run was an absolute struggle.  During my runs, I often think of what I might say in the blog afterward.  It usually starts out as something hopeful and encouraging, however, by the end of the run, it's all doom and gloom, hellfire and brimstone.  Today was every bit of that, if not more!  I started my run this morning later than I would like for a Saturday morning run, which meant that the sun was well above the horizon when I started and the heat was becoming oppressive.  It didn't help matters that it rained really hard last night, which created a nice thick steam blanket to run through.  Miserable!

I did a tad over 3 miles today, total.  Total time was a very sluggish 44 minutes.  My plan for today was supposed to be to run 2 x 10 minute segments with 3 minute walking breaks in between.  Unfortunately, that ended up changing a little as the run progressed.  To warm up, I walked briskly for about 4-5 minutes.  I did the initial 10 minute segment, feeling really good and as if I could run longer if I had wanted to (though the 10 minutes ended in the middle of a long uphill segment, so I chose to stop and walk).  In retrospect, I feel like maybe I shouldn't have stopped because I was doing a really good job in that initial segment and stopping kind of helped me lose steam.  The progress ended up being pretty much downhill from there.  My next segment was only 6 minutes before I needed to stop and walk and the following running segment was even shorter at 4 minutes.  I did a 2 and a half minute run segment and then shorter 1 minute run segment before doing a walking cool down the rest of the way.  All told, I have to admit that I'm disappointed in myself today.  Yes, I got out and ran.  However, I don't like the fact that I couldn't stick to my training plan.  I'm also discouraged by the fact that I was unable to push through the wall that I hit in that second running segment.  It's a similar wall to what I hit during the 5K.  It felt like the sun and heat were getting to me, my legs were tired and my breathing was uncontrolled and strained.  It was just not a good feeling at the finish and, frankly, it made me feel like a pansy.  I'm tempted to justify it away as stemming from sickness, HHN, etc.  But, if I'm to go down this running path even further, shouldn't I take responsibility and own up to the fact that maybe I just let myself off the hook too easily today?

I'm not really sure what to make of this.  Regardless, I'm still satisfied that I got out there and ran.  Next time, I'll just have to do better!  Training's never going to go exactly as planned, but there's always the next run to improve and prove to myself that I can do better!