I’m tired.

Wednesday night, I am pooped.  My oldest son had a football game and I didn’t get to bed until 10:30. I already knew that I wouldn’t want to get up at 5:15 to run on my treadmill before work.  I decided that I would do my scheduled two miles in the afternoon/evening after work.

Now this throws a whole new scenario into play.  Prior runs took place in the morning with only coffee in the gut.  An afternoon run would mean that I would have food in my stomach and will have worked all day.  It’s still early in this game, so I thought I would still go for it and see how it worked out.

I had a meeting, then lunch.  For the most part, I try to eat healthy.  I would say that healthy to not healthy would be  60%-40% respectively.  I consciously didn’t eat my whole meal (chips and dip to start, turkey sloppy joes with fries, and peanut butter cup pudding), but probably had to much of rich, not clean food anyway.   A few hours later I would decide that I would try my run outside.  Such a risk taker I am.  Mixing it all up.

I planned my route out on mapmyfitness.  I decided that I didn’t want to carry water, but I wanted to time myself so I had to carry my phone.   Note:  I need to figure out a way to carry stuff.  Weather was beautiful (77) so I headed out.  Five steps in, I realized I forgot my ipod.  I immediately noticed that I could hear my breathing.  Don’t like that.  Focused on breathing.  Felt like I wasn’t breathing good.  Got mad at myself, I was breathing fine, think about something else.  I also noticed that foot impact on sidewalk is totally different than impact on treadmill.  Don’t like that either.  Area under calves friggin hurts.  Feels like calves are rocks.  Don’t like that.  Tried to focus on other things.  Started to get tired like I wanted to walk right before one mile mark, but made myself go the full mile before walking.  11:04 at the mile.  Hmmm…am I slower? I walked for about 30 seconds and ran again.  Held pace for a few minutes, but my right calf is painful.  I can feel impact in my shins too.  Walked a little.  Jogged again and passed a teenager jogging.  She made it look so easy.  She made it look easy and fun.  She also had her phone playing music out loud.  Damn, why didnt’ I think of that?  Walk again, and turn music on my phone.  Ok, this is better.  Jog again. Pain again.  More walking, more jogging.  Getting close to the two-mile end, I sprint without looking at time.  Did I improve?  Start walking home, look at time and its 23:13. UGG!  Slower.  I’m kinda bummed, but after thinking about it, I’m not that bummed. 

I had a whole bunch of different  things going on. 

1. End of Day run
2. Food
3. Outside
4. Painful area under my calves.

I’m just going to take this one as a starting point to compare my next outside run to.

Came home and looked up how to stretch area under calves (amongst other things).  I believe the area I am complaining about is my achilles tendon.  The stretch I learned feels really good on it.  Overall, my legs are sore, but not unbarable.  Three days in a row running is kind of an accomplishment for me….I’ve never done it before this.  (In early workouts a couple of years ago, I may have run every other day or a couple of times a week, but for only 15 mins or so.  I mentally burned out on it, and have only half assed cardio for the last year or so.)  So, I’m kind of tired, but looking forward to the results of my first 3 miles on Saturday.  Oh, and of course, can’t wait for Leg Day tomorrow!!