What a crazy week.  The lethargy from last week hung on till Thursday.  I half-considered cutting back miles but decided that as long as I kept the pace under Ugh potential, I could probably keep chugging along without harm.  It worked out well.  Previously, my highest week was 82.13mi during marathon training in Oct. 2009.  Needless to say, I’m a happy girl.

My Current State
Even with the exhaustion weirdness, I am loving the way things are going.  My legs have been carrying me with only a few minor and fleeting complaints, nothing lasting more than a day or two.  And while I jot down a loose mileage schedule, more often than not I’ve been getting to the turnaround mark thinking “This feels good, I’ll keep going”.  That’s why the increase has felt so comfortable, it’s been a pretty organic process.

I do, however, have this ridiculous negative mental remnant concerning the size of my runs and my resistance to doubles, that I’m doing something wrong/bad.  But my legs feel strong (haven’t been stretching or foam-rolling) so there’s no reason to think I’m going to get injured, in fact, it seems like this consistency would have the opposite effect.

I guess it’s my good-girl guilt for eschewing training methodology’s “best practices” and letting what I see in my log – a bunch of 12s and 14s – influence me.  I suppose I’ve only to look upon Ed Whitlock’s training (2-3 hours/day of .3 mile loops in a cemetery at a “plodding” pace) or Yoshihisa Hosaka’s quality-filled 20mi/day, every day, to be reminded that people do take different routes to this running thing and that being older does not equal fragile.

Last Week’s Running (featuring a body in the river)
Monday was the sludgiest of the week.  I wore my heart rate strap to see if it my heart was being affected by this weirdness and yep, it was.

Tuesday, I ran a little after 11am and at one point, saw tons of policeman on the other side of the  river.  I also passed a guy with a  long lens camera taking photos and helicopters were flying overhead.  It totally slipped my mind till later that day when my friend Steph texted me to say they’d found a body floating in the Schuylkill.  I guess I was there about an hour after she was discovered.  Here’s the story, extremely tragic circumstances.  So now in my beautiful park, I’ve seen a dead man hanging from a tree and the aftermath of pulling out a decomposed body.  That’s a rather high ratio of death within a half-mile of each other, don’t you think?

Wednesday, I thought I might manage 14mi but when I got to the 6mi mark, reconsidered and turned around.  Wasn’t feeling 100% yet and didn’t want to chance an Ugh.

Thursday was such a tired day from the get-go.  I tried to nap but couldn’t, went to a voiceover job, did errands, was truly exhausted once home so I expected my run to be on par with Monday’s trudgery.  But no!  Once I hit the road (at 4:30, unusually late for me) I got an unexpected energy infusion and ran a handy 14-miler feeling like my old self again.  Whew, finally.

Friday was a planned 10, but with rain and thunder lurking in the forecast for the next couple days I took advantage of the dry sky, extending it to 12.  I wore my HR monitor hoping to see a more normal result and was pleased to find it in the proper ballpark again.

Saturday was an easy 10, what I consider a recovery run.  Even though I don’t have any hard workouts to recover from, I’m mindful of being chill when I need to (like after 2 “feel like my old self” runs preceded by a week of feeling like shit).

Today was a salty 16-miler, 83 degrees out but I held up well.  I started quite stupidly, going out too fast the first 4 miles (8:15-7:37? idiot).  Realizing I would pay for this later, I calmed down a ton, which is good because it was frickin’ hot. I think the energy was due to the previous night’s pigout with Fran.  We had fried calamari, pasta w/pesto cream sauce, pizza, several alcoholic beverages and tons of candy when we got home (which we decided must never happen again…it was Intervention-worthy).  I didn’t eat anything all day and ran at 3pm.  I’m still full.

Monday: 9@8:43 (HRR 65% 146)
Tuesday: 12@8:32
Wednesday: 12@8:20
Thursday: 14@8:06
Friday: 12@8:11 (HRR 68% 149…more like it)
Saturday: 10@8:21
Sunday: 16@ 8:16
Total: 85 mi (avg pace 8:20)

Iron Talk
Whatever ailed me lasted a week.  I’m not sure if it was a slight iron deficiency but suspect it was due to the timing, so I’ve been eating lots of beef and taking iron twice a day (with vitamin C for absorption) plus a multi-vitamin.

The interesting annoying thing about beef, btw, is that a 4oz burger only has about 20% of the RDA…not very much!  Same with spinach; eat a whole bag and it still won’t cover your daily requirement.  So while I plan to eat beef 2-3 times a week from here on in, I’ll also keep taking one Iron cap & Vitamin C before bed because you can’t take it with caffeine or with calcium or… Pain in the ass mineral, is iron.

I should mention that from past ferritin tests (taken when I was doing less mileage), I know I’m not in danger of iron overload.  Iron is something you have to be careful taking unsupervised (you shouldn’t) because it can be toxic so don’t you kids go taking iron willy-nilly.   End of public service announcement.  Though I did enjoy writing “willy-nilly”.

I’m still on fish oil (probably forever) but stopped taking glucosamine and msm about 3 weeks ago with no fallout.  I had a short bout of knee pain from jumping over deep puddles when I should have tromped through, but it went away after a couple days.  Gotta say, the old lady is holding up pretty darn well.

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