Today was Week 6, Day 1 of Couch to 5k.
After last week's final workout, where I ran 20 minutes straight, these next few are a little easier, designed as a recovery of sorts. So today, my runs were 5 minutes, 8, then another 5. Starting out, I was confident that it would be a nice easy workout, after feeling so great last time.
Not so much.
Today was one of the most challenging workouts I've had since starting. I felt awful the whole time. Tight, sore, and mostly just dragging. Energy was nowhere to be found. I wanted to stop and walk more times than I can count, but the important thing was that I didn't! I kept going even through my misery, and I'm really proud of myself for that.
But afterwards, I felt so defeated, and had a hard time letting go of the unpleasantness of my workout. I realized after talking it through with Andy that it must have been related to the time of day (we went at noon, but usually go around 7 pm) and, even more than that, what I had eaten so far this morning (a blueberry muffin and a few sips of a latte, vs. my usual whole day of nourishment).
I learned an important lesson today. My training is going to be filled with a lot of short-term ups and downs, and so far I have a really small sample size to compare each of my workouts to. As I keep going with this routine, I know that I'll be seeing long-term "ups" despite these short-term challenges. That's what's going to keep me going when I have days like this.
I have another really busy week coming up, and my goal is to do my PT exercises at least twice on my running off-days. Now that I'm putting it on the internet, I have to do it!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's so good that you can see the long-term through what seems like a setback. Are you thinking about trying to vary the times that you run? Not offering advice, just curious. :-)
ReplyDelete