Gonna Fly Now

It's been another busy week. 

Monday... I wanted to go running, but I came home exhausted and thought I would go the next morning instead. 

Tuesday morning... I woke up at 4:30 am to go running, and realized the streets were still dark and desolate. Not a safe place for a solo female runner.

Tuesday evening... I planned to go running, but after another exhausting day, I felt great about garnering enough energy to go for a brisk 1.5 hr walk.

Wednesday... severe thunderstorms and tornado sirens. So I swam a mile at 11pm instead.

Thursday... another very long day.

Friday... I had the morning free, so I got up and went for a nice 30 min run! Victory! It was meditative, it was stress relieving, it was successful.

No long run this week, I flew to Connecticut for a wedding instead. Now I'm back in Chicago, trying to come up with a realistic schedule for the upcoming week.... and upcoming 12 miles Saturday!

Food=Energy

This past week I started a new training program/job. After 18 months of being completely unscheduled, I was thrown into 13 hour days. Talk about shell-shock!

It's not like I didn't plan and prepare for the schedule change. I took out my calendar and figured in when I would work out around my daily commitments. Everything seemed to be in place.... except for one important thing.

Food.

I woke up at 6 am every day this past week. However, I only made it out of my apartment for a workout once! That one time, I didn't hit snooze and I didn't eat breakfast, and I was out of energy 15 min into the run. The other 4 days, I hit snooze too many times and convinced myself I would workout when I returned home at 8 pm. Of course I didn't factor in that my last meal will have been at noon, and by 8 pm I would be starving and wouldn't have enough energy to run. So I ate as soon as I got home, and promptly fell asleep. Rinse repeat.

So what did I learn this week? It's imperative that I schedule meal times as well as workout times. Or else I end up like I did on Saturday. I showed up for the 8 mile training run with T2EA not ready to run 8 miles. By mile 3, I knew I was in trouble. By mile 6, my legs were yelling fatigue and I was out of energy. Everything seemed labored. I ate the energy chews I should have eaten 3 miles prior, but I was still ready to walk. But my running partner suggested we just walk more frequently and not stop running. What a great idea.... I should have thought of that.

It worked. I finished 8 miles, a tough 8 miles and vowed to do whatever it takes this week to schedule my meals, and get in those maintenance runs.

Insatiable

Calories! My body is craving calories! It's like my body woke up a couple days ago, and it's starving. It seems like the swimming makes me hungrier than running ever did. Yesterday was a perfect example. The only time I wasn't hungry, was the 5 min following each meal. I woke up at 7, ate a large bowl of mini-wheats at 8. By 1030 I was starving and ate a roast beef sandwich. I pushed off eating until 3, when I ate a bowl of chicken curry soup. I finished the evening with an italian sub at 7. I came home 2 hours later and I was still hungry. How am I supposed to lose weight, if I replace all of the calories I burn?

This morning I wasn't sure what to do for food. I wanted to run before school, so I set my alarm for 6, expecting to be out the door by 615. This left me trying to decide whether or not I should eat before the run. For my long runs, I give myself extra time to factor in food and bowels. But, not this morning. I ended up going out the door without food. Needless to say, the energy wasn't there for my run and I had trouble getting through the 30 minutes. Argh!

Hopefully I'll get this eating thing figured out soon. But until then, I'd keep an eye on your small dogs.... mmmmmm.