Week 4 Heartland 50 training

It's official, I caught round number 2 of the colds that are circulating in our little town.  Fortunately (or unfortunately ), Melly had this one first, so she has guided me on how to deal with it.  Lots of head congestion, lots of pressure, and coughing for her, but not yet for me.  Here is how the week played out.

Monday:  Rest day and grocery shopping.

Tuesday: Negative ladder again.  LOVE this work out.  I decided I needed the three extra hours of sleep I loose when I get up at 4 am, so we moved this work out to after work when the temps were in the 50s.  This is such a great work out for confidence, because I sure can go balls to the wall for 1 minute :) .

Wednesday:  Strength training.  Slept in again this morning because I needed those hours.  Still kind of worried about my knee and hip.  For sure everything is getting better but still bothering me.  Had my yearly biometric screening so had to fast till 10:15, YIKES!  Cholesterol is up again, back up to 200, but all other levels were good.  Damn genetics and of course eating out doesn't help.

Ended up coming home from work early because I felt so bad, so decided to make it a rest day instead.  Little red and I did finger paint art when he got home from school.  This is the coolest book ever!  Each page has a different theme so you can make little dogs, cats, bugs, candy, people and more.  Usborne books are the coolest!

Thursday:  5-6 miles with 5 x30 second strides mixed in post mile 3.  While I didn't get much sleep, thanks to the sudafed making me wake up every hour on the hour, I did feel like running and so we did.  Kind of cool to see the snow flurries come down.  Almost had a heart attack though out on our rural road we run on.  There is a gentleman who runs out on our route, well, I say that, this is the second time we have encountered him.  The first time he had NO reflective gear on at all, and scared the crap out of both of us because we thought he was some kind of animal running straight at us FAST.  This time, he had on reflective gear, so we knew it was a runner, but deuce was loose and went straight for him.  There isn't a mean bone in deuce's little wiggly body, but I can imagine what this guy thought with deuce coming at him full force.  We managed to call deuce off (yeah for good recalls), but I am sure he might have made the poor guy a little nervous and or caused a little shart:)  Took stella for a quick 10 minute walk post run.  We may or may not have done a tiny little running.  Just a block, but she was SO happy.  Let's hope for no issues post run.

Post wrestling.  We are dropping back to once a week practices, versus twice a week to ensure he doesn't burn out.  We have one more month of practices, and we are letting him pick if he wants to go Tuesday or Thursday.  

Friday:  Strength.  Didn't happen.  I have been feeling really good in the morning, and then as the day goes on, I feel worse and worse.  I came home feeling really bad, and actually had to dose my self with sudafed and head to bed early.  I really wish this stupid cold would just exit and NOW!

Saturday:  12 miles.  I had a great night's sleep, well other than waking up a few times and staring at the clock, which I totally blame on sudafed.  I woke up with a tight hip, so while I was fueling and drinking coffee, I was also rolling like crazy with my stick, and stretching as much as possible.  I would have to say this was a really good run for me.  I only walked twice when fueling, and a couple of times to put deuce on his leash or take him off.  I didn't feel the need.  The wind was kind of blustery at times out of the west and north, but I was comfortable in my gear and wasn't bothered other than a little bit slower pace.  I ran in silence for the first hour and just thought about a lot of things going on in my life.  I needed it for sure.

Sunday:  We were given a range of 4-6 miles.  We chose 5 miles, as that was where we were at by the time we hit mel's house on our loop.  We ran a nice hilly route, which isn't really a recovery run, but it was nice to do some hill work and not worry about pace.

Overall, a nice week, even with this cold still hanging on.  27 miles total and still a tight hip, but I feel like it is getting slightly better.  Looking forward to another week of some speed and some nice weather!  Hoping to get back to strength training since this cold is finally loosening it's grip on me.

Have a great week!