Craving Routine
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The last few weeks have been more than the average insanely busy weeks. Since my birthday near the end of February, we have both traveled twice. First, he was gone for almost a week to Missouri. Then, I was off to Durham for a night. Last week, he headed down to Jacksonville, Florida for a few days and while he was gone, I hit Williamsburg to catch up with my family and do some wedding dress shopping.
The most difficult thing about all of this is that because our Monday-Fridays are so full, we typically do our menu-planning and grocery shopping on Sundays. When one or both of us are gone for even part of the day, it makes it difficult to get all that into the day. Nathan was able to get the shopping done on his own last week while I was working, but that didn’t happen this week. It’s only Tuesday, and we have already hit a food truck festival for dinner on Sunday and a family owned Italian restaurant in town last night. I’m telling myself right now, I WILL plan a home-cooked meal for tonight! But, with a 5:30 run planned and not enough groceries in the house to throw together a complete meal, we’ll see how that goes…
I was able to get in all my workouts last week, so that’s something good! Tuesday the group met up and we ran from my office downtown. My coworker has been recovering from a cold, so she decided to join us for her first run back and stick with me for the run/walk routine. It is always great to have some company on a run and I was so happy that Susan decided to join us! On Thursday, some other members of the group met up and we stuck with our annual tradition of running the Beerun route a week prior to the actual race. We hung out at Old Town Draught House for eats and drinks afterward.
My run Saturday was interesting. I don’t frequently run on my visits to Williamsburg, so I had to do a little research to put together a route. I emailed someone from the Colonial Road Runners earlier in the week and he suggested a couple of routes, but I knew I was going to be in a time crunch to get out and shopping. So, instead of going with the ones he sent (which I filed away for a later date), I dug around on Map My Run and found a route that I could do directly from my aunt and uncle’s house.
It was a quiet, just after dawn start to my run. I had to run down a two-lane windy road for the first couple of miles of the run. It wasn’t bad at all on the way out. Traffic was light and mostly heading in the same direction I was running, so on the opposite side of the road. I was a little relieved to notice that coming back the other direction there wouldn’t be so many blind curves to navigate. This was definitely a back country roads kind of run! I ran past two KOA campgrounds and lots of open field space. As I made the turn into York River State Park, the imminent rain finally started. I had about two miles to run along the park road to get down to the river. When I reached the end, I spent a couple of extra minutes walking (in the rain that was now a downpour) and then turned around for the run back. My the time I got back to the end of the park road, the rain had practically stopped, but I was chilled to the bone. I really started to struggle at this point. My hamstrings were tired and my lower back hurt. I stretched periodically, but miles 8-12 were extremely difficult. My legs actually hurt the rest of the day.
I hate runs like this. They make me question why I run at all. Ugh. But then, I remind myself that I didn’t go to bed until 11:30 the night before because we ate a late dinner after I got into town and that I didn’t drink enough water the day before because I was presenting and at the ACC tournament and then driving. When I do take care of myself, these things don’t happen in the same way.
On top of being exhausted from my run, the stress from work and wedding planning is starting to take its toll. Now, allergy season has started and that is always a struggle for me. As a result of all that, by the time we got home from the food truck festival on Sunday afternoon, I was chilled and achy and running a low grade fever. I was happy to have a supportive coworker and supervisor so that I was able to take Monday off to rest and get myself feeling ready for the week.
So, this week, grocery shopping aside, I’m trying to get back into my routine. I always feel better when I keep that up!
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