Summertime

Whew! I looked at the date today, and realized it's been over a month since I last wrote a post. During my most intense training (this spring), I barely missed a week. I don't have training to blame for my absence from my blog. Rather, working like a maniac at my summer internship and commuting for roughly 2 hours a day have killed the free time I normally use for things like blogging, grocery shopping, baking my own bread, or just taking a weekend day where I don't need to accomplish anything (besides running, of course!)

Well, today, I basically intended to accomplish nothing other than going for a run. I set out to spend my day doing fun things, whatever I felt like, after my long run. This day came on the coattails of yesterday, when I spent all day after practice attempting to have great research ideas and failing.  My *least favorite thing in the universe* is spending weekend time working and having nothing productive come of it.

So, at 6:30 yesterday, when I went out with friends for dinner, I decided to call a 36 hour moratorium on thinking about work. Dinner was tasty, we wandered around Fremont and ate pie and ice cream, and I went to bed early. I woke up, and decided I hadn't gone more than 16 miles in several weekends, so I wasn't going to stress out about the distance or pace of the run (that was supposed to be 16-17 miles), but I was going to go meet up with the CNW gang for a big part of the run. It was nice; my GPS died after the first hour of running, so I had no idea how fast/how far we were going. I just followed someone else's directions and talked shop (plantar fasciitis, various new running shoe models, upcoming races) with fellow runners. When everyone else was done, I had 3 hilly miles back home, and I told myself I could walk some if I felt like it (I was rather confident I'd done 16 when everyone else called it quits). But I felt good! So, despite my legs being a bit charred from the tempo run yesterday, I chugged up and down the hills back home. For the rest of today, I've done nothing much worth mentioning (did some clothes shopping, ate some froyo, took a nap when I started to think about work). A nice break.

The last few weeks have been stressful. Here are the things I've found stressful:

1. I'm down on my training. I haven't had bad workouts, per se, but my mileage has been intentionally lower (~70 miles a week for most weeks, a few lower weeks), and I've usually only had 2 quality sessions per week. I haven't felt like I've been really pushing the envelope with the running I've been doing, but I've been too tired to get in a bunch of double days (I often don't get home before 7:30 or 8:00). I've also just not felt particularly fit, despite a bunch of workouts going well.

2. Work has been stressful, both in terms of schedule and in terms of output. I like research, and in particular the projects I'm working on for the summer, I like the job and all of that. It's pretty intense to meet every day to work on a given research project, though, and my most preferred schedule of fairly early to early evening doesn't work as well for summer, both in terms of the commute and in terms of collaboration hours. Plus, I want to get a lot of work done while I'm here! So I definitely let work stress me out more than it usually does.

3. Commuting. Suffices to say that either taking 2 buses or biking 4 miles before taking another bus is a bit overwhelming. I didn't know how long this was taking me until about 2 weeks ago when I noticed that, best-case, the evening commute was taking 1:15 due to traffic. I've decided (against my hippy-dippy tendencies) that I'm going to drive to work for the last month, to try and recover a little bit of this time for myself. Even when don't drive, I find it difficult to enjoy/work during the commute, since there's a lot of traffic and I get carsick if I read/write on the bus. Plus people seem to love striking up conversations with me, even if I'm clearly busy reading a book they've never heard of.

4. Vacation! I know this sounds absurd, but B and I have planned a totally awesome vacation of hiking the Wonderland Trail (starting this Wednesday) for a week, and it's stressed me out. I love backpacking. I love being outside and "off the grid". I've enjoyed making the plans and buying the various new gear and freezedried food and everything else. But it's also stressed me out. It's taken time and energy to make those plans. The week off of work is oddly timed (rather than being one contiguous week, it's W-W). We don't have buffer of an extra weekend, as we would if it were M-F. Our timing is constrained by our permit as well as my work schedule. A week off of running is going to be very weird and I worry about how it'll affect my training. I'm scared one of us will get hurt, or have trouble finishing the trail, or that we won't have enough food, or that we'll forget something important, etc etc. My mind is an infinite generator of worries.

5. I miss my friends from Pittsburgh! I'm very used to having people to hang out with/go running with whenever I feel like it, just outside my door. I've been too tired to do much in the way of socializing here, and coordinating running on weekdays seems nearly impossible due to work schedules. Seattle is nice, and the weather is beautiful for running, and I feel guilty for being stressed about all these little things, especially when the big message (Work is going well, Running is going fine, I'm not injured and I get to spend the summer in the most beautiful part of the world, with an awesome boyfriend) is so positive.

Anyway, I'm writing these down because I want to remind myself it's ok to be tired and stressed, but not to let my stress induce more stress and anxiety. My training is going fine, but I've been too busy to write about it. Long story short is that I've been running ~70 miles a week, doing a tempo run each Saturday, a longish run each Sunday, and either a track workout or a tempo run each Wednesday. I've raced a couple of 5k's (both finishing in the top couple people, both in 18:06-18:07, the second of which was on a rather unfavorable course). I raced a mile and had a bad day.

After I get back from backpacking, my schedule will be a little different. I've noticed easy miles have been harder for me to get in than workouts, so I'm going to shift to doing an optional/choice workout Monday, CNW practice Wednesday, long run Thursday, and tempo on Saturday. If I feel like it, I can make Sunday a medium-long run. This way, I'll have one weekend day that isn't totally eaten by running, and fewer "easy miles" that I feel like I have to log on weekdays. I'm looking forward to it!