Mid-week training update

So, sometimes life happens, and runs get missed. It's a fact of life, especially when you aren't a professional athlete. That's pretty much the theme for this week so far.

Sunday night was supposed to be a 3-4 mile recovery run. I spent about 9 hours on Sunday at a water park with the family, and didn't get home until about 10:30pm. By that time, I was too tired from the whole water park experience, and I wasn't very excited about running so late at night, so I decided to call it a "cross-training day" and pass on the run. Judging from the way I felt Monday morning, I think it was a fair substitute.

Monday is one of my two rest days. After missing the run on Sunday, I was tempted to run on Monday. But, I decided to just stick to my schedule (besides, I think I needed some rest after Sunday's water park experience).

Tuesday night the schedule called for intervals...but Tuesday was also our 14th wedding anniversary, so we went out to dinner. Before I knew it, the dinner plans were way behind schedule. I should also mention that school started this week, so I'm getting up an hour earlier so I can drive our exchange student to school. That means that I've also shifted my evening schedule back an hour. Long story short - the Tuesday run just didn't happen.

Last night I was determined to run, and I did. I actually had a great run. It's amazing how well you can run after a few days off. I did a 5 mile run last night, which included some pretty good hills. I kept an easy pace, keeping my heart rate in my easy zone. The cool thing is that (1) I still felt strong enough at the end of the run to have kept going, and (2) my easy pace last night was good enough that I could have easily beat my 10k PR by about 3 minutes or more!

So, while I have missed a couple of runs this week, I'm not going to let it bother me. Missed miles are gone and you can't get them back. A great run last night renewed my confidence that I'm still in good shape and making progress despite missing a couple of runs. Plus, a break every now and then is probably a good thing.