Tag Archives: summer running

“Fast” Running, “Slow” Running, Summer Running, and Treadmill Running

Weekly a Recap: August 27th – September 2nd, 2018

I definitely got over the “bleh” feeling I was experiencing last week! So that’s good!! Spent most of this week just chugging along and getting my runs done. Or at least most of them. I skipped the one I had planned for Sunday, but I felt like that was necessary. But we’ll get to that in a minute. 😉

Monday:

4 easy miles
15 minutes of strength work

Started off the week with 4 sunny, hot, and humid miles. Hot and humid has pretty much been the theme of this week. It hasn’t exactly been fun, but like I said, I’m still chugging along. Just a little more slowly than I’d like. Haha well, at lot more slowly, but hey, the heat does that to me and I’m well aware of that. I can’t wait for the cold weather just so I can start speeding up a little bit haha.

Tuesday:

3 miles, intervals
15 minutes of foam rolling

I slept in and then procrastinated my run on Tuesday. I did get it done though! Ended up doing my interval workout on the treadmill. Honestly I’m kind of glad I procrastinated doing this run. I feel like it went a lot better than it would have if I ran first thing in the morning like I often do. Aside from doing it on the treadmill I felt pretty good doing this workout! 🙂

Wednesday:

5 miles

Got some cloud cover on Wednesday!! That was pretty nice! Still hot and humid though…

Anyway, I like running in my town’s cemetery. It’s nice, quite, usually no traffic or other people. It’s very peaceful. The only problem is small town = small cemetery. Following the road all the way around is only about .3 of a mile. Still find myself running there all the time though.

Thursday:

rest day

The plan on Thursday was a cross training day. Stationary bike, strength work, all of that. But somehow I managed to hurt my back in my sleep on Wednesday night? Like seriously, I somehow fucked it up so bad that just moving hurt in. Haha I guess I must be getting old. I never understood the whole hurt back thing before, but oh boy do I get it now! 😉 Anyway, since I somehow hurt it I decided to let it rest on Thursday.

Friday:

rest day

My back was still a little achy on Friday. Not as bad as Thursday though. But Friday was a scheduled rest day anyway, so that kinda worked out for me. 🙂

Anyway, on Friday Luke and I had planned to do some errands, grocery shopping, and whatnot. Our usual every-other-Friday routine. Our plans got a little thrown off while we were getting into the truck and getting ready to go. As we were pulling out of the driveway two dogs ran into our yard. A black lab and some kind of lab mix. So we got out and managed to grab on of the dogs, but the other took off down the street. Luke went after him while I held on to the other dog but every time Luke got close to the other dog he took off running. So I put the other dog inside in our spare bedroom and we got into the truck and went after the other dog. We couldn’t get close to him though. We gave up on him after 10 minutes or so. The dog we caught had a collar but no tags. The other dog had tags, but I wasn’t exactly convinced that they came from the same place. I think they just kinda found each other while they were both out running.

Anyway, after we gave up on catching the second dog we drove around our neighborhood looking for anyone who looked like they were out looking for a dog, but we didn’t find anyone. So we went back home and I convinced Luke to surrender the dog to animal control (which is legit just the k9 unit in our town haha. The police force in deals with stray dogs.). Luke felt bad sending the poor guy to some kennel, but I told him at least he’d be safe there and all his owner would have to do was call animal control and they’d be able to get him back. So that’s what we did. Called animal control and a cop came to our house to pick him up and bring him to the kennel. I sure hope the poor guy got picked up by his owner later that day. But at the very least Luke and I got him somewhere safe where he wouldn’t get hit by a car or attacked by another dog or something.

After he was taken care of we finally set off to get our errands done. 🙂

Poor guy was older, exhausted, and stressed out. He was very friendly and cooperative though. I hope he made it back home!

Saturday:

11 miles

Woke up at 5 am, got out on the road while it was still dark out, but it was still really hot out…I even saw some heat lighting. It was in the mid 70’s, 92% humidity, and just gross in general out. Not fun at all. But still better than last weeks long run! Haha last week I didn’t fuel or hydrate properly and that ended up being my downfall. So I made absolutely sure to do just that this week and obviously that ended up working! The plan was 11 miles and mission accomplished! But I did the first 9 miles outside, but the humidity was abolutely killing me, so I finished the last 2 miles on the treadmill. But I got it done and that’s all that matters!

Spent the rest of the day trying to recover from those 11 miles. Haha like I said, that humidity was killer! I felt absolutely drained afterwards.

Sunday:

rest day

Alrighty! Finally made it to Sunday!

So the plan on Sunday was 5 miles. Trying to do a few back to back long/medium long (because at this point 5 miles is basically a medium long run for me) because of the whole two half marathons in two days thing. But I woke up feeling super duper dehydrated and very drained. Physically and mentally. I thought I had done enough hydrating yesterday, but obviously not. Oh man and that heat and humidity yesterday! It gets me every time…

So while I would have really liked to have done my back to back runs, I just didn’t think it would have been a good idea for me this week. Not while I’m feeling like this. But I am happy with getting my long run done this week! So at least there’s that! 🙂 🙂

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Total Weekly Mileage: 23 miles

Not too bad!! Would have liked to get to the 28 miles that I had planned on, but still happy with how the week went. I’m very much looking forward to cooler weather though. I always feel so much better during the cooler months. But summer running is making me stronger and more tough. Or at least I sure hope it is! 😉

Anyway, wishing everyone a safe and happy Labor Day tomorrow!

~Ashley

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August Miles and Goal Check In

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Goodbye August and last full month of summer! Hello September! I’m very happy to see you! I sure hope you bring some cooler weather with you!! 😉

August was pretty hot, but it was nowhere near as bad as the heatwave we had throughout most of July was, so I’m incredibly thankful for that! In fact, I was able to run almost double the mileage I hit in July. Haha it also probably helps that my half marathon training is also really starting to ramp up, but really I think the main reason I was able to do so many more miles in August is just because it wasn’t so darn hot.

I’m incredibly happy with that number! I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of work done and hopefully have made some improvements in August. Sure, a lot of the running I did was slow. A lot slower than I’d like really. But I know that’s mostly due to the hot weather, and I should start feeling better and be able to pick up the pace a little once it starts cooling off a little. But aside from that I’ve been feeling pretty good! 😄

So, not gonna lie, I haven’t picked up my training journal once in the month of August. Oops… One of the goals I had set for myself in January was to keep up with my training journal and write down one good thing about every single day. I had kinda been doing that off and on so far this year, but at this point I just completely fell off of the bandwagon. But I guess this is a good reminder to get right back on it! 😁

I’ve been doing a pretty decent job about hitting my step goal most days. Gaga but not gonna lie, all of the running I’m doing makes it pretty easy most days. 😉

All-in-all I’d say August was a pretty good month, even though I really do need to work on the whole training journal thing. But anyway, I’m very excited about September, the fact that fall is almost here, and to see what I can accomplish now that my training is really starting to ramp up!

Wishing you a super September and many happy, healthy miles!

~Ashley

August 27th, 2018

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Around this time of year the sun shines through the trees right into our backyard in the morning and I think it’s super pretty. 🙂 I’m gonna have to start eating breakfast outside, just for the views.

Honestly I’d be much more inclined to eat outside in the morning if it wasn’t so freaking out out. At 7:00 this morning it was 80 degrees out and by 3 pm it was 92 but it felt like 100. Yuck. So yeah, I probably should have gotten up earlier to run this morning. I woke up at 7, but I probably should have been up at 5. That would have at least made my run for today a little bit more enjoyable.

The plan for today was 4 easy miles. Mission accomplished!! But since it was so hot out I don’t think I would have been able to accomplish anything other than an easy run today. I know I complain a lot about the heat, but it’s mostly because it’s just so damn frustrating! It slows me down hardcore, and that’s saying something because I’m already a super slow runner. It makes running much more difficult and I usually end up feeling drained, tired, and exhausted for the rest of the day after a run. Summer is just not for me, my friends. My body does not react well to hot weather.

That being said, today’s 4 miler wasn’t really too terribly bad. It was hot and humid and slow, but it wasn’t too miserable, all things considered. For going on 3 weeks now Rancid’s album Indestructible has been the soundtrack to like 90% of my running haha. But since I’m currently very much into that album right now it definitely made my run a little bit better this morning. 🙂 But it’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow morning and no amount of good music is going to make that better, so I might just end up doing my interval workout on the treadmill. That thing has come in very handy this summer and I am eternally grateful to my sister for giving it to me!

Anyway, lucky for me I still have half of a watermelon in my fridge and literally nothing is better than cold watermelon after a super hot run! So refreshing! So tasty! Watermelons are probably my favorite thing about summer! Haha I don’t even bother slicing them or cutting them up or anything. I just scoop the flesh right out of the rind. My preffered method of doing that is with an ice cream scoop (because bigger bites, duh 😉 ) but a normal spoon works just as well. 🙂

After my run I did a little bit of strength work as well. I wanted to do at least 30 minutes but I made it through 15 haha. I was completely dead after running in the heat this morning. Who’s bright idea was it to only ever run fall half marathons? Because a good majority of training for them happens in the summer. Maybe I should aim for a spring one next year. The only problem with that is that I’m terrified race day will end up being warm and I’m obviously not a fan of that. Oh man, honestly it’s probably a good thing that I always aim for fall races. That pretty much forces me to run in the summer and I need all the motivation I can get to run when it’s hot out.

Anyway, I’ve spent a good majority of my day searching for one of my favorite t-shirts. Have you ever had one that was just super comfy and fit you super well and that you absolutely love? Yeah, that’s how I feel about this one, but dammit if I can’t find it anywhere! And I’ve looked in some weird places. Sure I started out with the obvious ones, my closet, drawer, and the laundry room. But eventually I resorted to under my bed (and we don’t have a bed frame so I literally had to lift up the mattress and box spring), behind the dresser and my nightstand, under/between the washing machine and dryer, and under the couch. But nope. Nothing… It’s very sad really and I have no clue where I could have left it. I just noticed it was missing because I almost exclusively wear tank tops in the summer, so who knows when I actually lost it. Sad face. Haha but on the bright side, I cleaned pretty much everywhere I looked! You would not believe the amount of dog hair and dirt that accumulates under my couch in just a few months. I should probably clean under there more often. 😂

I also had some more chicken drama today. It can get pretty windy here in Kansas. Especially in the spring and fall, and the wind has definitely been picking up lately. This afternoon it was particularly bad. So bad that it literally moved the dog kennel around the chicken coop back a couple of feet, and somehow while that happened two of the chickens got out. Luckily they’re pretty easy to catch and they never go far, so I was able to get them back to where they belong pretty easily. But since the wind was still blowing the dog kennel around, I put them all into the actual coop so that couldn’t happen again. Luckily that is too heavy for the wind to blow around, so it wasn’t going anywhere.

You can see the line in the grass where the kennel used to be and obviously the pool used to be inside of it. The wind moved it pretty far!

So when Luke got home from work we set to work, anchoring the dog kennel to the ground, so this whole situation wouldn’t happen again. We had some little anchors that Luke hammered through the very bottom of the chain link into the ground, but we didn’t think that would be enough, so he also put in a post to help keep it in place. Then we made a few adjustments to the tarp situation, and now we thing it should hold up better in the wind. 🙂

The tiny raptors were very happy to be let back out. There isn’t a lot of room in the inner part of the coop for all 8 of them. That’s part of the reason we built the whole dog kennel set up thing. Plus as long as it’s not being blown around by the wind, it gives them a little bit more protection at night or if we’re not home to keep an eye on them.

But anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today!

Your hot and sweaty friend,

~Ashley

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Weekly Recap: August 20th-26th, 2018

Long Run and a Hill Workout

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Well, we’re back to this again…

I got really spoiled by the really nice weather we had last weekend and earlier this week. But all good things must come to an end and the cooler, rainy weather did yesterday. Bummer. But we’re getting really close to the end of August and the first day of fall is about a month away, so hopefully the summer weather wont be around for much longer!!

Anyway, now that it’s all hot and gross out again, I really regret not running on Thursday haha. I took a rest day because I was tired, but oh man I should have just sucked it up and gone for a run anyway. It rained almost all day and it wasn’t crazy hot out. I did take a nice long walk with Dean though. That was nice. We like the rain. 🙂

So since we are getting closer and closer to fall, I’ve been keeping and eye on the weather like a crazy person, just hoping and praying that we’ll start getting little hints of fall soon and that summer doesn’t hang around for too long haha. Since I’ve been doing that I knew that this weekend was supposed to be really hot and humid again. So on Thursday night I made kind of a last minute decision to do my long run on Friday, instead of on Saturday like I usually do. So at like, 9:45 that night (which is only 15 minutes before we go to bed haha) I started rushing around and getting stuff ready to go for the next morning. I like to have my coffee maker prepped, have an idea what I’m going to eat for breakfast, and my gear all in one place, the night before my long runs. Any other run I don’t make this much of an effort to prep for, but I like to be ready for when I run long haha.

The plan for this week’s long run was 10 miles but that didn’t happen. I got pretty close though. While the weather on Friday was still better than it was today, it was crazy humid, hazy, and hot out. And I made the really bad mistake of not drinking enough water before or during my long run, I didn’t fuel during my run, and I had no form of electrolyte replacement. Those are all things I need to function during summer long runs, so by mile 6 I felt like I was dying.

Luckily mile 6 happened when I was about a mile away from home, so I got to close to 7 by the time I made it back and once I did I grabbed some cash and ran to Casey’s (it’s less than a block away from my house), bought a couple of Body Armor’s (it’s my new favorite sports drink! So much tastier than Gatorade), ran back home, and proceeded to chug one whole bottle of my sports drink. Oh man, looking back now, it’s a really good thing I went back home when I did. I don’t think it would have ended up well for me if I didn’t. Anyway, I really didn’t want to go back outside after that, so I hopped on my treadmill and did a little over a mile. Just enough to hit 8 miles for the day, and then I called it quits. There’s not doubt in my mind that I would have been able to finish out 10 miles if I would have hydrated and fueled better, but hey, we all make mistakes. And 8 miles in the heat and humidity almost counts for 10 anyway. 😉 😉 😉

You can literally see how hazy it was in this photo. It’s not edited or filtered or anything. Gross…

While I didn’t quite accomplish my goal yesterday, I’m still glad I decided to switch my long run and hill workout. It was even hotter out today, without a single cloud in the sky, and of course we had another heat advisory. But earlier this week I had already decided that I was going to do this week’s hill workout on my treadmill. It’s actually super convenient because I don’t have any hills nearby that take me 6 or 8 or however many minutes my training plan calls for me to run up, so the treadmill kinda solves that problem! The only downside to doing a hill workout on the treadmill is that there is no downhill haha. I like the reward of being able to coast downhill after a hard climb up, but on a treadmill the most you get is totally flat. Which still isn’t bad, I just think running downhill is fun.

Anyway, I’m not sure if I killed this workout or if this workout killed me. Every inch of my body was dripping with sweat by the time I was done. It was pretty darn hard, especially after my run yesterday, but I still feel like I crushed it!

Afterwards while I was laying on the floor with my legs up on the wall my doorbell rang and I answered looking like this…

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Sweaty, smelly, and wearing clothes that did not match at all because I threw on the nearest shirt I could find before I opened the door. Haha it ended up being one of the election candidates for the Kansas House of Representatives. I guess she was going door to door to talk to people today and while she gave me her whole spiel she kept looking at me like I was a crazy person. It was pretty freaking hilarious. 😂😂

Honestly when I went to answer the door I figured it might be one of my neighbors. One of them currently has his truck parked in our driveway because he’s re-doing his, so I thought he might want to ask if his cousin who’s there helping if he could park his truck in our driveway too, or something like that. He know’s I’m a runner and is very used to seeing me run around the neighborhood and being a sweaty mess so I didn’t really thing anything of it but nope, it was someone out campaigning. Haha I thought it was really funny though. I don’t think she expected someone that gross to open the door.

Oh man, sometimes it’s just little things like that that make life great. 🙂

Anyway, earlier this week the wonderful people at Rollga sent me one of their Rollga foam rollers and their Activator thing, and those got here on Thursday. 🙂 🙂 🙂

You can check out Rollga’s website here!

I did a little bit of rolling with them that day, but I’m thinking I’m going to get super duper acquainted with them tonight! I could really use it!! Plus not gonna lie, even though I’ve only used it once at this point, I think this might be the best foam roller I’ve ever used! I really like the way the groves in in kinda cradle your muscles. It’s fantastic. I haven’t exactly figured out the Activator yet, but I’m gonna work on it!! It looks like it might end up being pretty darn useful.

(Friendly reminder that I’m not trying to brag or anything, but I did get these recovery tools for free. I’m not getting paid or anything and wasn’t obligated in anyway to talk about or promote them though, so I really do mean what I say. Just trying to be 100% transparent and real here. 🙂 )

Anyways, I hope you’re having a great weekend!

Until next time,

~Ashley

Thursday Things

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Remember how almost a year ago I got to see my all time favorite band for the second time and it was literally the best thing ever and I was the happiest camper that ever was?!?!? Yeah, me too.

#throwbackthursday

Yeah that was super-duper irrelevant, but I shared that on Instagram this morning so I thought why not share it here as well. 😉

Anyway, this week has been a little hard so far, half marathon training-wise. I had a rest day on Monday, followed by an interval session on Tuesday. That went REALLY well and I had a blast doing it. Probably because it was raining and a little bit cooler that day. And I also really like interval work haha. But after that everything had been a bit of a struggle. I’ve just been really tired this week (menstruating does that to me sometimes) and have been struggling to get up and moving in the mornings. Plus after the rain on Tuesday it got really hot, humid, and gross out again. And we’ve been getting more air quality alerts which really sucks. I was hoping we were done with heat and air quality warnings, but obviously we are not. I’m really hoping that August ends up being our last really hot month, but September can still be pretty warm too. I guess we’ll have to wait and see though.

Now that being said, I’ve still been sticking to my training plan and getting shit done!! Just a little more slowly this week. 😉 The plan for today was an easy 5 miler. I started out on the road but I didn’t wake up early enough this morning, so at about 3 miles in it was 80 degrees with 90% humidity, sunny, and the air quality was really bad. So I gave up finishing my run outside and completed it on the treadmill instead. Really glad I have that option now, otherwise this run would have been cut short! 🙂 I’ve got a hill workout on the scheduled for tomorrow and I still haven’t decided if I want to try to do it outside or just do the whole thing on the treadmill. It’s supposed to be pretty gross out tomorrow as well…

Anyway, after my run this morning I was pretty busy! I spent the rest of the morning cleaning EVERYTHING haha. I did a bunch of laundry, watered and tended to the garden, cleaned both of my rabbits’ cages which is a time-consuming process for various reasons, completely cleaned and took every inch of the room they live in, and then kinda spot cleaned the rest of the floor through out the house. Oh and periodically checking on the chickens and giving them ice, since they seem to hate this weather just as much as I do. After all of that was taken care of I showered, ate lunch, and sat down to read for about an hour because I felt like I needed a bit of a break after all of that haha. But at around 2 pm I was back at it again, this time doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, and then putting away laundry. Usually I don’t enjoy doing chores around the house, but today I really was for some reason so I was trying to take advantage of that. 😉

Oh and I’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with my little push up challenge! Las night I thought I had forgotten to do them during the day, but when I checked the scheduled yesterday was actually a rest day so that worked out haha. I did my 7 push ups for today later in the afternoon after my cleaning frenzy. I did all 7 on my toes which I was pretty darn proud of! I’m still not able to go down all the way, but before 5 was the most I could do on my toes and I felt like I was dying doing them. Now it’s still hard, but I feel pretty good doing them! Haha and maybe by the time this challenge is over my push ups wont look so half assed. 😉

Well, that pretty much sums up what I’ve done today though. Like I said, tomorrow I’ve got a hill workout to do, and probably a little bit of strength work too. And of course Saturday is my long run day. Then Saturday evening Luke and I are going to a housewarming party. I’m not sure who is all going to be there but the only people I’ll know are the couple who are throwing the party and Luke. Not exactly an introverts idea of a good time haha. Not gonna lie, I’m already looking forward to my rest day on Sunday. I’m already worn out just thinking about all of that! 😉 But I’ve been pushing through and getting it done! I’m so so so very ready for fall to get here, but I can’t deny that all of these hard summer miles aren’t helpful. They make running in the colder months seem so much easier and feel that much more enjoyable. Summer miles bring fall smiles!

All righty then! That is all from me for now!

How’s your summer running been going? Are you currently training for anything? Do you like running in the warmer months or the colder months better and why? Apparently I’m just full of questions today! But I would really like to know your answers! 🙂

Happy Friday eve!! I hope your week has been good so far!

~Ashley

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