ooh it was a tough week. How bad is it to do two runs in one day?

Hello all!

Yesterday was a tough week for getting the runs in. With kids out of school, the move, work and some other big stuff I won't go into here, it's tough making the time. Last week is a blur. All I remember now is - I think I ran on Monday - monday's "official" run. I did not run Tuesday. I did the track work-out on Wednesday. It's much harder doing that on your own.

I don't think I ran on Thursday.

I think I did the Thursday run on Friday. That was a good run - but I didn't follow the directions exactly. I did my warmup as directed. Then I started the tempo run. My heart rate monitor was all messed up though and was telling me my heart rate was low. I kept running a little faster and a little faster, trying to get my heart rate up. By the time I realized the monitor was not working properly I was probably running at the speed I was suppose to end my tempo run. But here is what was strange. Although I was definately breathing hard, and my legs were working hard, and I was feeling some discomfort from the effort - I realized - I could keep going, and keep going, and keep going. Normally it would be hard for me to sustain that effort level, it would be a short term effort. But this time, it was ok. I realized I was not "dying" to stop. It almost felt "ok". I knew I was running harder than I was suppose to given the tempo run, but the phenomeon of how I felt was so new I didn't want to back off and build up to this speed. I decided to just keep at it as long as possible. It was so weird. My body was fine. My mind was confused. It was ocilating between "you should stop. you are not suppose to run this fast for this long." and "this is fine. you can keep doing this for a long time." My heart rate monitor did start functioning again and it turned out I was running at 171 - which is about 4 beats over my thresh hold. I put the number out of my head and just kept running. It was very cool!

After 15 minutes I had to stop to go to the bathroom (I happened to be running past Heather Farm). Bodily functions can be so annoying! When I started back up again the feeling was gone, my legs felt heavy and building back up was hard.

I ran Friday's 4 mile run on Sunday morning and Saturdays long run on Sunday afternoon (in the heat of the sun). That long run was hard! I had a really hard time keeping myself going and felt like I was running really slow. Tim ran with me for about 45 minutes, then he headed off to do 20 minutes hard. I found myself struggling with pain and bordum so I broke up the run into 20 minutes segments. I ran 15 minutes slow, probably mid-low zone 3, and then did 5 minute surges where I built into was probably high zone 4. After a few of these rounds the 5 minute surges got too hard so I slowly dropped down to 10 minute slow, 4 minute surge, 5 minutes slow, 3 minute surge, 4 minutes slow, 2 minute surge, 3 minutes slow, 1 minute surge and then did 5 1 minues slows with 1 minute surges...anything to keep my mind occupied and break up the monotony. When Tim ran into me toward the end of the run I asked him to leave me to run alone in my misery. I could not stand the thought of his cheery face and his "isn't running fun and easy" way of running, while I was suffering so much. I apologized later.

Don't know how good the day was for my overall training eh Luis??? All in all - now that the misery is over - I'd say it was a great day. I kept running. It wasn't easy, but I did. I hurt - but I did it. Life is tough - then you smile.