DISNEY WINE & DINE + KIAWAH HALF TRAINING WEEK 4

How is it September already? Oh. Right. Time flies.

And this week was no exception. In fact, it flew by so fast that I had to tack an extra day onto it to get my long run in. That's allowed on holiday weekends when you travel out of town for a wedding, right? Right. 

Workout summary

• Monday: Barre class
• Tuesday:  Barre class
• Wednesday: Off
• Thursday: Easy run - 3.11 miles (8:22 pace)
• Friday: Off
• Saturday: Easy run - 3.12 miles (7:54 pace)
• Sunday: Off (tired from the wedding and travel fun)
• Monday: Long run - 8.05 (8:47 pace)

I struggled a little in the beginning of the week because of the sad news I got last week about my sweet Meadow and I really had zero motivation to even try to run. Running used to be my escape, but I've been struggling so much mentally with running since it's been so miserable for me for well over a year now thanks to health problems. Then when I started to feel better we got hit with blazing humid summer weather. I went from looking forward to runs to completely dreading them.  

I talked this over with my coach and we decided to back off on the longer speed work sessions and do smaller bursts of speed no longer than 400s at a time. I feel like I really need to get my regular old running legs back underneath me, as well as get my head on straight, before I try to tackle longer speed work.  

The runs that I did do this week were much more like the old me. I don't think I've run this well consistently since winter 2015 (before all the sickness started). It's also very reminiscent of fall 2013 when I was really starting to pick up some speed, but then got pregnant and slow again. This past week gave me hope. 

The weather was also much, much better, with the exception of Friday's tropical storm craziness (although, it wasn't nearly as bad as they predicted it was going to be). The weather is still hot and humid here by most people's standards (high 70s, low 80s with humidity mostly up over 75%), but not by mine since most of my runs this summer were run in triple digit heat indexes. This feels like fall to me! My easy pace just dropped like crazy in this weather and I actually saw a sub-8 overall run. If this continues, it means I'm actually faster than I was back in fall 2013 or winter 2015. Here's hoping! 

Other than workouts, this week was packed with activity. 

We traveled to Charlotte on Saturday for a friend's wedding. We also had family in town back here in Charleston for the rest of the weekend. They came down to help out with B while we were away on Saturday evening, but since they were here we also didn't want to linger long in Charlotte after the wedding. While it was wonderful to see so many friends in Charlotte, the trip was so quick - we headed back Sunday morning immediately after breakfast. And then I was too tired from the wedding fun (including being up until about 2 a.m.) and then beach fun to do my long run. So I bumped it to Monday. 

Since finding out that Meadow has cancer, I've been contemplating things I can do, not just for her but for other dogs. Cancer sucks. So I'm thinking of doing a fundraiser for canine cancer where the profits go to a research center. I did a quick sketch of a bracelet idea. I chose lavender and purple since lavender is the awareness color for general cancer. I may also design a t-shirt or something, too. Dogs like my Meadow deserve the best chance they can get and research helps! And because canine cancer so closely resembles human cancer, research they do in clinical trials for dogs can also help the fight against cancer in people. 

So that was my week. A bit of a whirlwind to wind down the summer, but at least I got in some beach time!

How did you spend the last unofficial weekend of summer?

I'm linking up with HoHoRuns and MissSippi Piddlin'  for their Weekly Wrap post. You can check out all of this week's posts here.