Sometimes I need to listen to my body more

[Day 153B]

So there are these two completely conflicting things that I find myself saying to myself a lot:

"Start where you are, not where you want to be." - for when I get too aggressive and try to do too much too fast.

"Bite off more than you can chew and chew it." - for when I'm scared of what I have planned and I need a little jolt of motivation.

I'm really bad at toeing the line between these two sentiments though. Inevitably I just spend all my time swinging too far from one end to the other and the balance seems like it's never there. But I think I'm starting to realize that balance isn't a thing anyone has perfected from day 1 when they draw up their plans. Every time I make plans I find myself changing them precisely because things feel off-balance and I need to get myself back on track. Today was life reminding me that I'm veering too far in one direction and I have to center myself again.

I'm not recovered. You'd think that'd be obvious to me given the fact that I don't really sleep through the night because of the nagging pain in my legs but no. I gave what I had to that tempo run and boy was it rough. The first 2 miles at HM pace were actually pretty solid, legs felt heavy but the pace wasn't hard to find or hold. As soon as I tried to hit the 10k pace mile though, things just fell apart. To the point where when I did finally decide that there was no way I was going to be able to do the rest of the workout and I should just run home at whatever pace I felt like, I couldn't even keep myself running at faster than 10:30 pace AND I was taking walking breaks. It was a rough day. I got ambitious this week with the residual soreness from the weekend combined with adding swimming back into my schedule and it wasn't prudent to be doing what I was doing but I did it anyways. Now I know I have to step back. And I have to go back to my calendar for the summer and re-plan things out in a way that will allow me to get the most out of my job and my training and the time I have here in Boston. And the way to do that is definitely not the way I've been going about it right now. Will have to figure out where the right balance is.

Today's PM Workout: A planned tempo run that sort of devolved into do whatever you can, logged as 6 miles in an hour, there was a good 2 mi pick up at HM pace (~8:20) in there.
Hit Rate: 20/25 (80%)

I needed a wake up call. Life gave it to me. Re-vamped schedule for the week involves not doing stadiums tomorrow and taking an easy short run with Henry in the AM instead. Then swim practice and an interval workout on Friday, Saturday off, and race day Sunday! Yay!

Much love,
Jess