i had to pee again, just sayin

So i had to run to the bathroom again in the middle of my run, really? I feel like those old guys in the prostate medicine commercial "Matt doesn't have a going problem, he has a growing problem..." But all in all the run went well. Pretty steady i felt. The little graphic I get from Nike+ seems to be a little "heart monitor-esque" in its sporadic up and downness:

Wow, the run really didn't feel that up and down. I guess steady for me is not stopping. Which is pretty good.

And in closing, Week 8, I am going to kick your ass! so look the eff out!

Matt

Not the best ever

Well, my running days are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So I get up all crazy early like normal and get my run started. I do my warm up walk and start running. It didn't take very long for me to stop running and start walking. My knee was fine, but it was that stinking tendon that was on FIRE through my whole foot. Not really happy about it. So I decide that I'll just have to walk for a while instead of running. So I walked 2.04 miles in 34:32 minutes. I wanted to keep moving, but I was not happy about walking and not running. My main thinking is/was "I've gone 7 whole weeks and NOW it decides to hurt? TOTALLY not fair! I'm almost to Week 9! UGH!" Plus another special explicative when my mom asked me how it went right when I got back haha. But I understand that it was the right decision so that I wouldn't seriously hurt my foot. I'm definitely not counting Monday as my W8D1, so I think I'll try to give it another go tomorrow. We'll just have to see how I feel in the morning hah.

Speaking of how I feel tomorrow, I had my first yoga class tonight! I really liked it. It was sorta challenging and kinda not all at the same time - I guess the perfect mix of both really. I really like the teacher and I feel like this will definitely be beneficial for me. I have a different teacher on Thursday, so I'm excited about learning more from someone else and whatnot. I was so relaxed at the end, when we were doing the end relaxing poses, I bout fell asleep haha. But overall I'm glad about it. :)

The main determining factor with running tomorrow or not is if I'm sore from tonight or not. So tomorrow could be my W8D1 or it might be Friday (more healing/resting time for the tendon in my foot). I'm hoping that it's tomorrow and that I just rock it out. But we'll see.

The random picture of the day is from my good friend's wedding this past weekend. This is me with some pretty awesome friends from college. And I love weddings! :)

Till next time friends! HONK!

like a Russian race horse

Week 7 is done! It's crazy how close we are to being done. 9 weeks seemed so far away when we started. This weekend has been crazy for us. Friday night we went to a fund raiser dinner for my old campus ministry and the speaker was the first double amputee to complete the Ironman Hawaii triathlon. So i felt like a total slacker after that, kidding. He was great. Then we went to Adel and spent the night so we could be up there early for the garage sale, then there was the garage sale then we went to the FSU game where we got rained on, I mean like raining buckets for the entire first half. But all in all it was a good weekend.

I tell you all that though so you know where my body and mind were as I ran today: exhausted. I feel like I cheated again today cuz I had to stop about a mile and a half in this time to pee. Which i know is a valid excuse but I feel like I wouldn't have been able to make it through the whole thing if I hadn't stopped, regardless of having to pee. I guess it isn't a big deal but I feel like I'm falling short somehow. I hold myself to a pretty high standard with certain things. Things I care about and am passionate about. Which is good, as long as its not an unreachable standard I guess. Anyway, here is my run:

Till next time

Matt

a little edgy

Well to report on my last two runs. I ran with Matt on Saturday around Lauren's neighborhood. It was a solid run with some terrible hills and... terrain. Most of it had sidewalks. But then there was the section that did not. And it instead had pinecones and roots that had to be watched for. Anyway. I loved getting to run with someone, and I wasn't expecting that. I was nervous that it would be too tough to chat at all, or that our paces wouldn't work out. But all of that turned out to be fine. My next run was yesterday. I actually loved it. By the time I got home my right hip flexor and my left ileotibial band were both in pain, but not terribly so. Unfortunately after walking around all afternoon, they did hurt pretty badly, but today they are on the mend. Because I didn't want to further injure them, I didn't run today.

Ok. I know I am about a solid week behind. It isn't so much that this is being pushed to a back burner, its just that my job is such an important and terrifying burner, that 90% of my focus has to be there. I can't risk injury, or lack of sleep, or anything that makes my mind feel any lack of control. I am sorry that I'm not as involved as I want to be. I can't even put to words how incredibly and constantly overwhelmed I am right now. And it seems the things that seem to help don't include running. Not because of the actual running, but because if I run at the gym it takes a disproportionate chunk of time from my day, and regardless of location then it messes with my showering routine and meals schedule (since I have to wait a weirdly long time after eating to run), and makes more laundry for me to do, and just generally feels irresponsible when my house is a wreck, and my mind is the same. Things that calm my mind include cleaning and organizing. And sleeping.

I am hoping to cancel my gym membership and only focus on running outside for a couple months. Running outside is easier mentally and doesn't require me to pack yet another back when I leave for work in the mornings. The fact that there are no scheduled walking breaks in the runs seems to help me zone out while I run now, so I am hopeful that soon I'll see running as a way to decompress, not as an inconvenience. That all being said, thank you for bearing with me during this really rough transition in my life.

Even the Avett Brothers couldn't help me

Ugh. Wednesday and today's run was just not that great. The runs so bad that the Avett Brothers, a great band, couldn't even keep me motivated. I've mentioned the recurring knee thing, and now there's a tendon thing. The tendon on top of my left foot has started to get pretty agitated when I run, and it gets pretty painful. If it were just my calves that were on fire while running, it wouldn't be a big deal. But nooooooo, my leg feels the need to take it a step further and cause me more pain. Ugh. So Wednesday I had to stop a few times and stretch out my calves and the top of my left foot in order to keep going. So Wednesday's run was 3.03 miles, 46:44 minutes, and 435 calories. Today's run was 3 miles, 47:04 minutes, and 431 calories.

Wednesday's run was rough, but today was even worse. I couldn't run the whole time because of all the pain in my foot. :( So freaking sad. So I did my warm up walk, ran for a while, walked for a little bit, ran some more, walked just a little bit, and then ran the rest of the way. I didn't keep track of how much I ran versus walked specifically, but I know that I ran more than walked. I was just not happy about the walking, but I had to in order to keep going. I'm just sad about the whole thing. I mean, Monday wasn't too bad, but it just got progressively worse this week. I'm really hoping that the yoga will help with the running, along with just being repetitive each time. Plus I bought a knee brace and an ankle brace for support while I run, so let's hope that it makes a difference.

Speaking of the knee and ankle brace, here's my leg all braced up:

I also bought the Runner's World Training Journal today. Hopefully it'll be pretty productive. :) But for real, today during the run, one of the ONLY reasons I kept going was because ya'll keep me accountable for my share of the "work" haha. I know that ya'll would make me hold up my end of the bargain, so that definitely kept me going. Yay geese!

Honk!

that's my dog

Today I decided to go for my Week 7 Day 2 run with my dog, Kane. Overall bad idea. In the future Kane and I will stick with walks not runs. He made it about a mile then I had to take him back to the truck. I drove down to the college because I thought it would be neat to run around campus and in theory it was. But with Kane with me and all the students on the sidewalks and such it ended up being a hassle. Since I was near the college I parked at my mother in laws church and was able to drop Kane off there. Unfortunately that came around the one mile marker so I had to pause my workout on Nike+. I kind of feel like I cheated but it had to be done. Anyway here is the chart of my run:

And here is a picture of Kane:

Yes those are Tigger ears. Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing about y'alls runs.

Matt

2 runs 1 post

So first thing is first. Saturday's run with Liz Baykur was great. It was great in the sense that I ran it with Liz, other than that it sucked balls. I told Liz when we got done that next time we were finding a nice flat track somewhere. Seriously, it was very challenging. Lots of hills. We ran near Lauren's house in Sandy Springs. We used Nike+. The link to the run is here. Even though it was really difficult, I'm glad I did it.

Now today's run I decided to set the Nike+ to do a 5k for the distance since Week 7 all the runs are 2.5 with the warm ups making them 3 miles. I figured just go ahead and do a 5k, so that is the plans all this week. Today's run went well. I didn't run around a track but did a big loop cutting through a nearby neighborhood, then through the Big Lots parking lot and making my way back to my house. I felt like the run was really steady but the graphic tells a different story:

Still, nothing too dramtic. The dip there at the end is me walking although I can't really explain the big increase at the very very end cuz I didn't start running again. Oh well. Hope all is well and it was great seeing you guys this weekend. I hope we see each other again very soon.

Matt