Kind of an abysmal week as far as exercise goes.

Monday: rest day
Tuesday: 5 mile run (11:43 avg pace)
Wednesday: rest day
Thursday: 1 mile run (10:10 avg pace)
Friday: rest day
Saturday: Dirty 30 from 21 Day Fix…except without weights because I forgot them at home
Sunday: rest day (forgot to do my Yoga Fix…oops)

Tuesday’s run was on the treadmill. I usually watch HGTV at the gym because it’s the only thing interesting on right after work. House Hunters is starting to drive me crazy though. Just paint the freaking cabinets if you don’t like the color! (Says the girl who said she was going to stain her cabinets when she bought her house 7 years ago and hasn’t yet.)

On Thursday, I got stuck in traffic so I only had time to do a fast mile before Jonathan’s niece’s soccer game (which then got rained out because a MONSOON came through the only area of town where we were). I do not recommend running at 5k pace without a warmup. Oh, the side stitches…

And I was just lazy on the weekend. I could run, or…I could watch possibly the worst movie ever made (in a funny, MST3K kind of way).

I’m officially on no training plan for what feels like the first time in forever. And it basically stays that way through the middle of November! Yay, running freedom! Of course, I’m doing a running streak starting in October, so it’s not 100% freedom for that entire time, but close enough.

Monday: Total Body Cardio from 21 Day Fix and 2.5 mile run (12:24 average pace)
Tuesday: 15 minutes of Upper Fix from 21 Day Fix and 5 mile run (11:40 average pace)
Wednesday: Lower Fix from 21 Day Fix
Thursday: Pilates Fix from 21 Day Fix and 2.5 mile run (12:04 average pace)
Friday: rest day
Saturday: 3.5 mile run (11:57 average pace)
Sunday: 2 mile run in the awful triple-digit heat index and full sun (13:18 average pace)

Wow, LHR training did a number on me. My legs and my lungs have completely forgotten what a normal pace feels like, which is ridiculous since I didn’t do it that long. The first two miles of Monday’s run were slow going (with a lot of walking…and a lot of bugs), but I did some strides for the last half mile to remind my legs what running feels like.

Then I hit the treadmill on Tuesday to help with my cadence and pacing. I’d noticed that the cadence on my last few runs had been really low (150 vs my usual 175-180), which I figured was what was causing me to be less efficient. I managed to stay mostly in the 170s while running on the treadmill, which is good. I did take four walk breaks (totaling about 7 minutes out of the hour), so my average cadence was a little lower at 162 (my walking cadence is around 120).

Finally, my legs remembered what they were supposed to do, so when I headed out on Thursday (after the heat index dropped from triple digits!), they automatically went to around 10:30 min/mi and wouldn’t slow down, so I ended up walking a bit. Okay, so maybe I’m going to have to recondition on pacing a little, since my lungs haven’t caught back up yet.

Saturday, I did manage to run nonstop (thanks, rain!), albeit a little faster than I initially meant to. (Mile 3 was run in 11:16. Not super fast, but faster than my easy runs need to be ran.)

You will notice that I tried to stick with doing my 21 Day Fix workouts every day (until I got to the weekend, anyway). This is because I officially start the program at the end of the month (details to come), so I’m trying to get in the routine. It made running tough though! Sore, jelly legs are hard to run on.

Monday – Rest day
Tuesday – 3 mile run (151 bpm)
Wednesday – Yoga Fix from 21 Day Fix
Thursday – I carried two heavy lawn chairs for over a mile…that counts as exercise, right?
Friday – I shot a wedding for 5 hours
Saturday – 1 mile run (174 bpm) with non-recorded 1 mile walk back
Sunday – 2.3 mile run with recorded 2.3 mile walk back (and forgot my HR monitor)

This was a terrible week. Probably the worst non-injury-related running week I’ve ever had.

I already wrote how Tuesday’s run went wrong. Then I wasn’t motivated to run slowly, so I decided to give up on low heart rate training. On Saturday, I went out for a “normal” run, only to have it interrupted by stomach/GI problems a mile out and had to walk back. And on Sunday the same thing happened, just a little farther into the run, and let me tell you how much it really sucks to have to walk 2 miles before you can get to a bathroom.

Also, I’m pretty sure the two actual weeks of LHR training has messed up my pacing, as 13 minute miles were feeling like 11 minute miles used to. I pushed to about an 11:30 pace for a three minute interval and felt like I might die. Hey, remember when I ran faster than that for over 2 hours? Uggh.

It can only get better.