August 18th-24th Training

Monday: 9 miles (6:46); 6.3 miles (7:15)

Tuesday: 7.4 miles (6:44); 6.2 miles (7:10)

Wednesday: 8.9 miles with 5x1/4 mile hill. Freaking hot.  Temp were approaching 90 and the dew point was a very balmy 78.  I even had a random car stop and offer me for a while and some old lady on a bike said I needed to take it easy.  Plan was 8 hills with jogdown recovery, hopefully starting at 80ish and working down to 75ish by the end. Ran 81, 81, 82, 84, 83.  It felt easy but yet I couldn't breathe and my legs were crapping out.  I was dying badly enough to call it a workout.  This was my first hill workout like this in a couple of years.  I hate hills; 8.4 miles (7:05)

Thursday: 7 miles (6:51); 9.1 miles (6:42)

Friday: No Running. Felt like crap at lunch and bummed around when I got home.  Low-grade fever and chills.

Saturday: No running.  Kind of a bummer because I was planning on doing a 5k that had some decent money. I was hoping to run but my fever came back after I got done mowing the lawn.

Sunday: No running. I was hoping to run by today but I was still dragging butt.

Week Total:  62.3 miles. Bad week but what can you do?  My Running Ahead log goes back to 2010 and four out of the five years around this weekend, I've been sick.  And in 2009, I ran a race in early September coming off a sickness, so late August is turning into my Kryptonite.  Normally my wife and I rarely, if ever, talk about running but she pointed out that I went from taking naps, being a bum and running a lot to getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night, adding in working full-time again while being exposed to over 700 kids and still running a lot. What could I expect? But I'm still in that training limbo period right now, so it's not a big deal. On a good note, my hemoglobin is still climbing.  It was 12.7 about six weeks ago and now it's 14.6.  My baseline is 16.0ish, so I should be back to my normal levels at the end of September.