Week 7

Monday

Gym Day. Had a really fun workout today! I didn't get through all the exercises, but hey—that’s normal for me. It was full-body day, but it felt way more like an upper-body day. But I showed up and put in the work. Consistency is what’s going to make this happen.

Tuesday

Run Day! The hard part today was just getting out of bed. After one mile, I felt much better. Turned into a beautiful, easy morning. I was going to run for 35 minutes, but I was so close to the 3-mile mark and feeling really great, so I just ran to 3 miles. Walked half a mile back home to cool down. Did 10 pushups on my staircase and stretched a bit. It's going to be a beautiful day.

Wednesday

Rest Day

Thursday

Run Day! Work was super slow this week, so yesterday I decided to take today and tomorrow off since no one was on my schedule. I didn't sleep well last night—actually forgot to turn the AC down, so it was too hot to sleep. At 5:00am, I turned it down and slept until 7:00am. I figured it would be good to try some later runs. It might be a bit hotter, but that was the plan—get used to running in the heat. You never know when race day might be hot. Oh wow, it was hard the whole time! I had to fight through the entire run. It was hot, and my legs were heavy. I ran for 35 minutes though—consistency.

Friday

Gym Day! Up at 4:00am, at the gym by 5:00am. We did a lot of chest work today. I still added more weight than I ever have. I was surprised I could do it. It makes me wonder—where else am I holding back? What am I scared to do that I can actually do? I’ll have to apply this mindset in other places and see what happens. Maybe I'm not as weak as I think.

Saturday

This is usually a rest day for me, but not this week. With having two days off work and getting lots of rest, I decided to go for it and do the long run today! When I looked at Google Weather, it said it would be cloudy today and much sunnier on Sunday. Our temps right now start out in the upper 70s and feel like the 90s. So, an early start is best. I got up at 4:45am and was out by 5:45am.

Run started out bad—about 50 feet in, I started coughing and eventually threw up. I walked a bit while coughing but felt better after. Not sure what happened there, because the rest of the run was totally fine. Maybe I needed more time to digest my fuel before running. Just shows you—you never really know how a run will go once you're in it.

My focus was to hydrate during this one because of how hot it was. My plan was to run 2 miles, then walk 2 minutes. I was actually able to stick to it without a mental fight. I really enjoyed the run today. Watching the world wake up is so cool—we ran by businesses getting ready to open and saw traffic picking up. That in itself felt like a win. I was up and going before most of the world.

This run, however, made me sore. My back was hurting around mile 8, and my legs felt very fatigued. My feet also ached afterward.

With my back, I probably didn’t check in with my posture as much as I should have—I was more focused on hydration. My legs? For sure just getting stronger.

Now my feet, I’m not sure. I’m kind of thinking of looking into new insoles. The ones I researched and said were best for long runs… maybe they’re just not good for me. It felt really good to run 9 miles in this Florida heat.

Thoughts:

There’s so much to be thankful for this week.

I feel like I'm getting stronger—both physically and mentally.