FIVE Miles!

(and tomorrow I've got 10 miles...)

Today's workout was 5 miles at pace. I woke up at about 5:50am, however a little over an hour earlier, I had woken up with a pretty massive charlie horse in my lower left leg. And you know what they say, "what starts in chaos..." Okay, well it wasn't that bad, but I pulled myself out of bed, tried to map out a nice, easy (for the mind, anyway) 5 miles and got myself on my way. First, I notice there are a lot of sirens in the neighborhood, so naturally, I get distracted and completely go away from the route I've mapped out. Ok. Nonetheless, now that I've done about 7 or 8 weeks of training I decided I wouldn't let it stress me out and to just have a goal to be home before I get to 45 minutes. 45 min would have meant 9 min miles, and so that was my goal. Like I said, it was a little rough getting out of bed this morning to begin with. So, I run. And about 2 miles in-more cramping, yet this time it is in my abdomen. I haven't had a side ache in a LOOONNNNGG time. At least not one like this. My breathing was all off, my stride changed...to say the least, it was painful. Ok, changed the song on my iPod, since one of my policies for aches like that is to sing (or speak). I thought I had read somewhere that you need to push more air out and to regulate your breathing you should do that. Really, what do I know. But I think it kinda works. Ok, charlie horse-check, side ache-check. Now we are to at least 3 or 3.5 miles. What else could go wrong. As I run down a (rather large) hill and round the corner for the last mile and a half I notice this shooting pain radiating through the left side of my back. I try to notice if I am doing something to cause it-no, I am not bouncing back and fourth; no it is not happening just when one of my feet hits the ground. Weird. So, I push through until about 4.5ish and fortunately get stopped at a light where I simply bend over and in a yoga like pose-with my hands between my knees I sort of do the "angry cat" pose while standing up....and voila...much better. So, I pull myself together and finish it out.

Wow. And all of that before 7am. I thought maybe my motto for the day would be TGIF...but then I realized that I've got 10 miles to do tomorrow. Perhaps my motto should be GOTV (get out the vodka) or GBIB (get back in bed). Until I decide, check out this 5-miler (5.2383, to be exact) !