A little boy standing by a burn pile.

Eight weeks, baby. Let’s get to it. PS: that opening picture is symbolic of my burning sore muscles, our weekend dedicated to all things chore-related, and the hope that some day I might actually burn calories (instead of making up for the running by shoving my face full of carbs).

Week #8’s Workouts

-Monday: ran 3 miles on the treadmill in the early morning. Super ugh on this one. Just painful all around. I was still quite sore from the five mile run on Saturday plus to be honest, I had a bad attitude. Like, really bad. So yeah, not my finest moment or run.

-Tuesday: did an online circuit workout (a free outline from PopSugar). It was a good, quick workout – nothing fancy, just simple and sweaty.

-Wednesday: was supposed to run 3 miles this day but opted for an hour walk with a friend (and our two double strollers) in the a.m. and scrapped running for that day.

-Thursday: had a busy day that eliminated running until that night. I’ve lamented about running in the evenings before (would so much rather get it done early in the day) but I knew it had to be then or never since I had a 4 mile run on Saturday so I took off after my kids went to bed and Brian was home and busted through a pretty fast 3 miles (ha! very relative description for people that actually run fast). I remembered to turn on the Garmin this time and tried a 9-minute mile to start which ended up with me not being able to breathe (and a side ache so bad I thought I was going to pass out) so I had to stop and stretch before slowing down a little (ok, a lot). So much for thinking I could run fast(er). I’m realizing more and more that time is not what I’m in it for. But a girl’s gotta try a couple times to show herself she’s younger than her 37 years, you know?

-Friday: rest day. Should have probably fit in another cross-training or yoga workout. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Story of my life.

-Saturday: this was a 4 mile run day. I offhandedly asked my kids if anyone wanted to come with me. We had already planned for Saturday to be a pretty extreme family working day (tons of outside chores) since it’s our only free Saturday for the next two months thanks to soccer and wrestling. So I knew it would be an early morning run. My 9-year old, Walker, said “sure mom, I’ll go.” I had a little bit of sore throat and wasn’t feeling 100% on my a-game so inside I was like, “that’s fine – not like I’ll care if he slows me down since I’m kind of low on energy anyway.” Um, yeah. Famous last words. This kid. He totally outran me. The farthest he’s gone running with Brian to train for their 10K is three miles and he didn’t stop once on our run together (except for a too short for my liking water break at about mile 2.5). I would throw out things like, “Walk, you sure you don’t want to slow down a bit?” You know, for him, not me. (Riiiiight.) And he was all, “Mom, come on, we can do this. We’ve got this.” We ended up going five miles and he never quit (neither did I for that matter since, dude, how could I stop when my 9-year old was killing it?). Looks like I found me a running partner. What a little rock star.

Three pictures of a Mom sitting by her son.

The rest of the day was spent doing outside chores with the family until about 4 p.m. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t thrilled about having to move after a five mile run but in the end, I think it helped keep the muscles all loose and limber and whatever they needed to not seize up on me (although at one point crouched in the rocks weeding, I almost couldn’t stand up but that’s just between you and me since my oblivious boys didn’t notice their old, hobbling mother since they were too busy throwing dirt clods at each other). We all pitched in and worked like crazy together so we could do a fun family activity later that night.

A family outside burning a pile of yard debris.

Little Notes + Thanks

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: thanks to all of you who check these training updates and chime in with your advice, support, comments, own experiences. I really don’t expect it especially since this is really just a great, albeit public, journal for me so I can look back and see my running progress. I was commenting to Brian this week that I feel like I have a whole community to rely on and it means so much to me, especially since this hasn’t been a super duper I’m a runner and I love it easy journey for me. It’s hard and challenging and painful (with some milestone moments thrown in there) and I’m just grateful for all of you, that’s all. Thanks for letting me overshare at times and let you in to this non-food part of life right now.

Also, thanks for several of the recommendations of late – notably the google maps for planning routes (dude, where’s that been all my life), the mapmyrun app and online tool (I’ve actually had this a while but Melanie B in the comments last week mentioned it talks in her little ear while running alerting the completion of another! mile and it kind of made me giddy with happiness to hear that same little coaching voice while running Thursday night) and for the Gentle Leader collar idea for our pup, Mags (thanks, Colleen!).

Finally, sorry that I didn’t post a cool running story last week from those that have been submitted. Time got away from me (I feel like I’m barely keeping up as is) but I promise to post a couple this week since I’ve loved receiving them. Stay tuned!

Coming Up

-Running 4 miles Monday, 4 miles Wednesday, and 5 miles on Saturday and hoping to do all of those in the early mornings (it’s spring break this week and while we aren’t traveling anywhere, I’d like to have the runs over with so the rest of the day can be spent being productive with the kids – think: jobs and fun and some afternoon baking together).

-Would like to try for more stretching/flexibility this week. It didn’t happen as much as I would have liked last week and I can feel my muscles are tighter than they have been. I would like to prevent/prolong injury as much as possible so looks like I’ll be reading books to my kids while sitting in various yoga and stretching poses. Cause that’s not weird at all.

How is running going for YOU?