It's hard to schedule exercise around all this sleeping...

So much sleeping since school ended...I knew I was tired, but am I really this tired?  Granted, I'm coming off of a couple months of nightmare-filled sleep, so I now that my sleep is mostly dreamless, I know I'm playing catch-up, but still!  I can barely read or watch TV without falling asleep!  And then I sleep for a few hours!  I'll wake up every hour or so during a nap, but each time I feel like I was hit with a ton of bricks and getting up doesn't really feel like an option, so I fall back asleep.  After about 3 hours of that, I usually manage to drag myself off the couch for a run or food, but it's still not easy.  At night, I fall asleep fast, and stay asleep til early morning, but since I don't want to get out of bed that early, I fall back asleep, and then end up hitting the same cycle I get into with naps.  But I'm afraid that if I actually get up between 4 and 6:30 when I wake up naturally, I'll be even more likely to nap later...

I wouldn't really care about all this sleep, (I'm on vacation after all) but I keep missing out on perfectly gorgeous afternoons.  I should be running or biking or horseback riding or picture-taking!

I start my summer job tomorrow, so that will at least keep me too busy to nap most days.  I think.  I don't actually have a schedule yet, all I know is I'm working about 9-5 tomorrow.  Speaking of summer jobs, I love it when opportunities just fall in my lap without my having to put any effort into finding them...  The owner of the local brewery sent me a message the other day asking if I'd like a summer job.  My answer was yes.  Within a few hours of his original message, I had driven out to the brewery and signed all the necessary paperwork.  Sounds like my job will involve a little bit of everything.  Helping can beer, cleaning kegs, whatever other odds & ends come up, maybe even some bartending.  I'm looking forward to the chance to do something completely new and different for a little while!  And since I won't have to be there before 9, there will always be time to exercise first thing in the morning if I am so inclined (a/k/a if I can talk myself into getting out of bed).

This week : 

M : bike 17 / 16.3 mph / 1355 ft

Pub Run 3.2 / 7:32 / 56 ft

T : run 3.5 / 7:01 / 285

cooldown jog 0.8 / 7:56 / 0

W : National Running Day group run 3.6 / 7:28 / 0 ft

F : bike 24.6 / 17.4 mph / 1647 ft

Sa : long run 14.5 / 8:15 / 919 ft

Su : bike w/ Lauren 21.1 / 17.5 mph / 1335 ft

total miles run : 25.7

total miles biked : 62.7

The Pub Run this week was brutal.  It was really hot and humid, and we could barely drag ourselves through the two laps.  We agreed that there was no way we were going to even attempt a 3rd, just finishing the 2nd lap was hard enough!  

I was exhausted and cranky on Tuesday after a long day of grading standardized tests for all the other teachers, and went straight to the couch when I got home.  But as I was lying there, I thought about how I can't let mental lethargy stop me from exercising because that is the beginning of a very bad cycle.  So I put on my sprinting shoes, went out the door, and pounded the pavement.  I stopped the watch when my legs/lungs hurt as bad as my brain did, and restarted the watch to jog home.  

I should have done my own run, or at least bike, before the group run on National Running Day...but I spent half the day working in my classroom, and I think I spent the other half the day napping.  

Friday's ride brought out my worst exercise-induced allergies yet.  I had hives all over my shins by the time I got home.  It didn't help that there was a chance I was in poison ivy the night before, so I wasn't positive if it was allergies or the poison ivy at first...  However, I was pretty sure that any contact I had with the poison ivy would have only been my feet, and the hives did fade a bit after my shower, although they lingered faintly for the rest of the day.  So, I almost found out for sure that I am allergic to poison ivy...but nope.  I still don't know if I am allergic to it or not.  

It was gorgeous out on Friday, and I should have gone for a run after the bike ride, or at least gone to ride my horse, but I found out that one of my friends was also off work, so I ended up spending the rest of the day hanging out in the sunshine with her, drinking refreshing minty beverages.  Gotta have fun once in a while, right?

I then realized that I have a half marathon in two weeks and haven't been doing many runs over 4 miles, so I decided I had better do a long run and make sure my body still knew how.  I thought about how many miles I should do, and then decided that running for time was better.  I wanted to spend 2 hours out there running, so that even if I bomb the race on the 18th, I should at least have trained longer than it will take me to finish.  I'm mostly worried about my level of acclimatization to the heat, but it ended up cool(er) and foggy yesterday, so although I didn't get to really test my body in the heat, I definitely had practice with the humidity!  I should probably try to run at least 7 on a hot day soon though...or just desperately hope it doesn't get hot on the 18th until after 8:30ish.  Anyway, as far as long runs go, it felt pretty decent.  My left hip felt like it was going to break off by the end, but that's more or less normal, especially considering I haven't been stretching as well lately.  I didn't bring food or water on the run with me, and didn't feel any worse for the wear there, so that's good.  

Lots of rain in the forecast today, but it was only barely raining at 8:45, and Lauren and I knew it was go for it or take the day off...so we went for it.  The roads were soaked from all the overnight rain, so we were going to get pretty wet whether it was raining or not.  We enjoyed our ride in the light rain, and then I did a few more miles on my own after.  She didn't have time to do more than our original 13 miles, but I had time, and figured I may as well get at least 20 while I was out there. Plus, the sun came out just about as soon as we parted ways.   

Monday's ride

Trying to re-hydrate after Monday's run : 

I didn't even touch the beer until I'd had one and a half tankards of water...

Summer doesn't officially begin until the bikinis and fancy minty cocktails appear.

It has now begun.

I'm allergic to exercise

It's that lovely time of year where there's so much pollen in the air, I'm better off staying inside. Instead, I go out and exercise so all that pollen can attack me while my body is too busy working at the exercise thing and can't fight the pollen.  Last spring, the pollen was getting into the pores in my legs when I sweated during bike rides, and making them on fire with itching.  This year, the main target seems to be the roof of my mouth.  (With my eyes and nose being slightly lesser targets.)  Every time I run or bike, the roof of my mouth gets severely itchy shortly after I get home, and continues to plague me for an hour or more.  Super annoying.  I'm already taking claritin and a nasty spoonful of local honey every morning.  When it gets really bad, I have to add a zyrtec in the afternoon.  I really hope the pollen settles down soon...I don't like being allergic to exercise!!

This week : 

T : run 7.5 / 7:50 / 604 ft

W : horseback ride 1:40

R : run 8 / 7:29 / 925 ft

jog 1 / 8:02 / 0 ft

Sa : group bike 20.4 /15.7 mph / 1378 ft 

Su : run 7.1 / 7:57 / 584 ft

bike miles : 20.4

run miles : 23.6

I wasn't feeling very motivated this week.  I took Monday off because no one showed up for the Pub run, and I felt like I could use a rest day after Sunday's long run anyway.  Tuesday was field day at school, and I was impressed that I was able to run as far and as well as I did after being out in the sun all afternoon.  Wednesday I had the afternoon off, and decided to just spend some quality time with my horse.  I probably had intentions of running or biking after I got home, but obviously that didn't happen.  

On Thursday I decided to work on my downhill muscles.  I ran hard down a 2 mile hill, and then of course I had to turn around and run back up.  Shin splints set in during the first downhill mile, but they gave up and quit before I reached the bottom, so that was good.  I have noticed them appearing whenever I push downhills, so I'm hoping if I keep doing it in moderation the muscles will get strong enough to stop doing that.  

I had many good intentions of biking 30 miles for my 30th birthday, or at least running 30 minutes, and also I was going to ride my horse.  But it was the last day of school, and most of the staff got together for some celebratory food and drink.  That started around 12...and I finally left at 5:30 because I needed to shower, change, and get ready for my birthday party at 7.  So, I didn't get any exercise, but it was a very fun afternoon/night!  I still have the rest of the year to be 30, maybe sometime before the end of it I will be able to run 30 miles for my 30th, instead of having to fall back on the biking 30 option.  

Somehow I got talked into a group bike ride at 8 am Saturday morning.  It meant I didn't get a whole lot of sleep the night before, but the ride was fun, and I took a 3 hour nap afterwards.  

I didn't particularly feel like doing anything on Sunday, but I was 54 minutes short on my 3 hour running minimum for the week...so I ran just to finish out the 3 hours.  I may or may not have looked at my watch every few minutes to see how much further I needed to go just to reach the goal... It didn't help that it was ridiculously humid out.  I was really dragging out there, but I'm going to blame all the water in the air.  I think gills might have been more useful than lungs.  

Of course, I'm also allergic to riding my horse.  

But I managed to have a fun ride, despite my nose trying to drip down my face the entire time.

Happy Birthday to me!  

Not sure why we had to look so formal here...

We were just having pizza and beer, after all.

A week of biking adventures

Highest mileage so far this year!

This week: 

T :  21 (16.3 mph)

R : 16.3 (14.4 mph), 18.3 (15.8 mph)

F : 29.5 w/DR (16.3 mph)

Su : 23.2 (15.6 mph)

total miles : 108.5

Tuesday's ride started out well enough.  I was cruising along and feeling good. About 14 miles in, I came to an intersection.  The smart thing to do at this intersection is unclip before you get there.  But sometimes there is no traffic and I don't have to come to a complete stop, so I prefer to stay clipped in and make the turn.  The problem is, the trees are getting really full of leaves and it is hard to see if any traffic is coming until you get to the edge.  Which means I should definitely unclip in advance.  So of course I didn't.  And by the time I knew for sure that I needed to unclip, I was at a stand still, so the motion of trying to pull my foot out through me off balance and I had a very un-graceful, slow-motion, fall over.  (Yes, next time I will actually be smart and just unclip in advance).  My wrists absorbed most of the impact.  Both feet came unclipped when I bounced off the ground.  I picked myself up, got back on the bike, and continued on my way.  My wrists were hurting, but I kept as much weight off them as I could (which ideally I would be doing all the time anyway), and I made it home.  It wasn't until I got to the shower that I noticed the lovely bleeding chainring tattoo that I had on the back of my right leg.  And later that night my shoulder started hurting.  Apparently my wrists weren't the only part of me that absorbed the impact.  

battle scars

4 little bite marks running up my leg

I may or may not have told someone I got bit by a snake with 4 teeth...

I took Wednesday off because my shoulder hurt, and it was rainy, and I spent the afternoon at a joint birthday/celebration fiesta with some friends.  We were supposed to have a pool party, but of course it was the coldest day we've had in the last 3 weeks so we ended up mostly wearing sweatshirts instead.

Thursday I wanted to ride early in the afternoon, but I also wanted to go on the bike shop's shop ride in the evening, so I did a short ride early on, expecting another 20 or so miles with the shop ride.  I found out in mid afternoon that the shop ride wasn't happening.  That was disappointing, since if I had known earlier, I could have just made my earlier ride longer.  But I hadn't known...so I went for the second ride by myself.  The first ride involved a climb up Muddy Creek Mountain, which is a tough climb, and which I felt was overdue.  The second ride was easier.  

Friday I went for a long(er) ride with a med student I met earlier in the spring, who runs and bikes.  I had originally hoped to run with him, but I'm not running, and he has also been biking lately, so looks like maybe I will have a new biking buddy.  And maybe I will be able to get back into running in another week or two and maybe we can do both together.  Our ride started out well enough, the clouds were almost not raining on us, and we were cruising along a bit faster than my normal pace.  We were also talking, which meant I wasn't as focused on the road as I should be, so I hit a giant rock, and realized soon afterwards that I had my first flat tire.  By then, the rain was pouring down.  I held my bike, he changed my tire much quicker than I could have done it myself (at least I was prepared and had tire levers, a spare tube, and a pump), and we continued on our way.  After a long climb and descent, I glanced at my garmin and realized it wasn't recording.  Somehow I forgot to hit the start button.  Sad not to have the climb recorded, or any evidence of how fast we were going in the beginning, but oh well.  I missed recording the first 12+ miles, but I got the last 17+. The sun eventually came out and we had a great ride.  It was nice to have someone to ride with and talk to out there, and although my legs were hurting from trying to keep up on the hills, overall I felt really good.  My back didn't bother me at all.  

My lack of back pain on Friday made me tempted to do an even longer ride over the weekend, but thankfully I did manage to talk myself out of that.  Just because my back has been feeling great doesn't mean I couldn't easily overdo it and set myself way back.  I took Saturday off and made myself pick a 20-25 mile loop for today.  It was a loop with a couple of tough climbs, but at least it was shorter!  My back ended up hurting, probably because of all the climbing.  And also probably because I forgot to do my yoga stretches before the ride.  I'm pretty sure they are important for keeping my back in one piece.  

In other news, I haven't quite made a decision about my lung issues yet.  My asthma is not bothering me as long as I'm not running, and I'm not sure if I really want to go pay a pulmonologist right now.  My allergies are most definitely awful right now though.  Exercise makes them twice as bad.  I get home from each ride and sneeze up a storm.  And my eyes get so itchy after I get home, I end up trying to claw them out of my face.  I'm already taking Claritin in the morning and Singulair at night. (although I've really never felt that Singulair does anything at all...)  I've heard many times that eating local honey helps with allergies.  I've considered it before, but I loathe honey so much, I've always decided against it.  I decided that it was time to deal with it, so I went down to the local health-food store, sure that they would carry local honey.  Astonishingly, they do not.  But they had some Ohio honey, and swore to me it came from an area with the same allergy-inducing plants that we have here.  Plus, this honey is special for allergy sufferers and includes stuff like herbs and nettles and dandelions that are supposed to also help with allergies.  So I paid a ridiculous amount of money for a tiny jar of the stuff.  And have been suffering though a spoonful of nasty, sweet, crunchy, stuff once a day.  It better be helping...

this pretty much sums it up. every day.

I am in the middle of another attempt to actually take two full weeks off from running.  So hopefully I will manage to hold out and wait until Saturday to run again.  And then I can assess my stupid asthma and decide whether or not to make an appointment with the pulmonologist.