With three dogs and a toddler, there's rarely a dull (or relaxing) moment in our house, and last week was a prime example of that. 

I had designated this week as my week of summer vacation before starting my new job on Monday. I had big plans to do nothing other than get a lot of sleep, go the beach, and work out. 

But I have a real issue with just taking it easy. I feel like I always have to be working on something, even if it's not work, like this blog (I updated my About page, among other things), side projects, finally getting the jewelry design thing together, working on other products, etc, etc, etc, and I feel guilty if I just relax. So I didn't get a ton of relaxing in at all, plus we also had a few random (and freak) happenings around our house that took time away from that sleeping and relaxing thing. 

Overall, I did well with getting in all of my workouts this week. I did miss out on paddleboarding, though. Sad! Maybe next week. Because I'm still recovering from this latest bout of illness, my runs this week were slow and most included some walking, including the race I did on Saturday at the IOP Beach Run 5K. By Sunday evening, though, I was starting to feel much, much better and was able to at least run the entire run without walking at all. While it's frustrating to be so slow right now, what I'm dealing with is no different than recovering from an injury, so slowness is to be expected. 

Workout recap

Last week's workouts

• Monday: Barre class
• Tuesday:  Off
• Wednesday: Easy run/walk - 3.02 miles (9:29 pace), Heat index 101
• Thursday: Easy run/walk - 5.02 miles (9:22 pace), Heat index 100
• Friday: Barre class 
• Saturday: Easy run at the IOP Beach Run 5K (ran miles 1 and 2, walked in mile 3) - 3.10 (8:31 pace), Heat index 96
• Sunday: "Long" run - 6.11 miles (8:57 pace), 80 degrees (heat index somewhere in the 90s)

Monday
I had a relatively quiet day - I went to barre class and then worked on a few things that I wanted to get done. I like Mondays like this. 

Tuesday
I wasn't feeling well on Tuesday, so I decided to skip the workout. But we did get some beach time on Tuesday evening after dinner. The water felt so refreshing after dealing with these triple digit heat indexes and B had a fun time splashing around and building sandcastles. 

Tuesday evening right after we got home from the beach, my big baby of a beagle, Lucy, jumped off the bed (or something, I'm not entirely sure what happened) and hurt her front right shoulder. She screamed when I touched her and wouldn't walk on it, so I took her into the emergency vet. 

A few hundred dollars and a shot of painkillers later (along with some pills to take along), I took a very whiny, gimpy dog back home. She whined and yiped through the night if we touched her or moved her, so I was pretty worried about my little beagle girl. 

Wednesday
Wednesday I woke up with a headache that started with pressure at my ears, and pain that went all the way up my face and down the back of my head to my skull.

Lucy, on the other hand, woke up feeling spunky and chipper with no recollection of the fact that she had hurt herself the night before. She was jumping around and just fine. At least she wasn't hurt worse, but that dog is the biggest baby when it comes to pain I've ever seen. Of our three dogs, she's definitely the most pain intolerant, but since I'm never sure if it's serious or not, she goes to the vet just in case. 

Sadly, I missed paddleboarding because I wasn't feeling good. I felt a little bit better later in the day, so I did get a short run-walk in with the triple digit heat index. 

Thursday
I felt a little bit better on Thursday. Still had a ton of pressure and some pain, but not nearly as bad as Wednesday. I got another run-walk in on Thursday in the crazy heat. 

I went to a specialist on Thursday to try to finally get to the bottom of this year and half long illness (and really, I've been plagued with allergies and sinus issues my whole life, but in the past year and a half it's gone completely out of control to the point where I was constantly sick). I wrote a full blog post about it, rather than putting it in this post and making this post ridiculously long. Read if you wish. There may be a Golden Girls reference. 

Thursday night we lost power around 2 am and our smoke alarms went haywire, beeping intermittently. They weren't full-on going off (thank goodness), so B didn't wake up, but they did send all three beagles into a shaking, scared frenzy. They all piled on top of me in bed and tried to crawl inside my shirt. It took about 2 hours for them to calm down after the alarms stopped beeping. Fun times!

Friday
I started my day with barre class at Barre Evolution. I was feeling pretty awful - really tired and really weak, but I'm glad I went to class. 

In the evening, we went to dinner at with some friends who are in town from Charlotte at Morgan Creek Grill at the Isle of Palms Marina. This place is always fun since they have a big sandy area right by the marina for kids to play, and of course, it was nice to see our friends (two of whom I may have talked into doing the Palmetto70 Relay with me in March). 

Saturday
I ran the IOP Beach Run 5K on Saturday morning. I definitely didn't have the energy to race it, so I did what I could. At least I finished. The highlight of the morning, though, was Little B running his first baby dash! I'll post a full recap of our morning later this week. 

After our morning beach fun, we decided to head to the pool. Unfortunately, they closed it just as we were getting there because of storms in the vicinity. So we went home and filled up the kiddie pool for B to splash around in in our backyard since the storms weren't near us at that point. 

However, in the middle of the night Saturday night the thunderstorms found us. The beagles hate thunderstorms. They woke me up so they could try to crawl inside my shirt. Again. So I was up with them for a few hours. Again. Good times. Again. 

Sunday
After relaxing in the morning with coffee, I headed to brunch with some friends. It stormed most of the day (the dogs loved it!), so we were stuck inside. It finally cleared in the evening, so I was able to get my "long" run in for the week. I did 6 miles and it was awesome! It was also my longest run since May. It was in the 80s with 100% humidity, but I felt great. This is definitely a good sign. 

I am finally starting to feel better. My asthma doesn't bother me at all and my lungs have never felt this good. Ever. And I got through this latest illness without it turning into an upper respiratory infection and without going on antibiotics and steroids. I think we might be turning a corner here. 

While most of the week wasn't so relaxing, the weekend was relatively low-key and it was nice to have some down time before the new job starts. 

So really, it was a tough week to be a beagle in my house, but otherwise, we had some fun at the beach, I started to feel better, and B ran his first race! Not a bad week for the humans. I'm looking forward to next week and maybe starting to feel like a normal person again instead of tired, sick one. 

So how are you all holding up in this crazy summer heat? Anyone else have dogs who hate thunder?

PS - I've been linking up for the past several weeks with HoHoRuns and MissSippi Piddlin'  for their Weekly Wrap post and I really love it. You can check out all of this week's posts here.