2 Best Friends | 679 Miles | One Virtual 5k [week 3]

Week 3. Week 3 was a doozy. Or a wash. Or a complete and utter disaster. Whatever you'd like to call it. If you missed it last week, Keli and I were profiled on Another Mother Runner, which was the highlight of our life because Dimity and SBS are such huge inspirations. But as we both talked about in our posts last week, ever since we were contacted about the profile, everything has gone catastrophically wrong. I've held it together pretty well--until week 3.

My high point was also my low point (and was also my only run of the week, GAH). Week 3 had a fun workout scheduled for Monday and I'm not going to lie. When I see things like this, I think, "I work on my feet all day... CHECK" and move on. I'm awful. I will do something over the summer, but during the school year, I am lazy. On Tuesday, I decided to get the speed work out of the way. It called for a mile warm-up, 6x400s, and a mile cool-down. Okay, I would prefer to do these on a track, but in my neighborhood in the dark would have to work. Unfortunately, the weather has yet to acknowledge that it's spring and it was 5 degrees with wind gusts of 25mph. In short, it was absolutely miserable. Because I run these on the flattest stretch in my neighborhood, back and forth, I did half of them directly into the wind. By the last 400 (into the wind, naturally), I was running at what would've been a pre-injury mile for me. I finished the cool-down mile with my face stinging from the cold and stood under the hot shower for as long as I could without being late for work. It was miserable.

In the midst of this, the stomach flu was circulating through my house. My husband was sick Monday and I was doing my hopeful thoughts of, "I am going to miss this one, yes I AM." I was at work for an hour before my stomach started rumbling and I felt chilled. Well, of course I felt chilled. It was really cold when I was running. And maybe my stomach was just disturbed from running that morning. It became apparent that I was lying to myself after awhile, though I did manage to make it through the day of work. I got home as quickly as I could and was about to crawl into bed when the sitter called and said that my youngest had thrown up. I went to get him, wondering why I didn't get to be sick alone. We came back home and passed out together. Now, confusingly enough, my feet felt fine when I got into bed, but after two hours of sleeping, my feet cramped up and by the next day, my plantar fasciitis had flared up and my sesamoids were sore. I have no idea how the stomach flu caused my feet to start to hurt again, but somehow, these things happen to me. My friend Sarah, who is super smart and an amazing runner, suggested that it was probably dehydration and my mom thought that maybe the virus ache settled in the most recently injured part of my body. I think my feet are just jerks. At any rate, between my feet and dehydration from the stomach flu, I didn't manage to get another run in last week and that's pitiful. I thought I'd get back on track today, but I woke up to this.

You can't tell, but there's a layer of ice on the street. Come ON.

What we had in common last week was how tough it was, although Keli managed to get out and get some amazing runs in this weekend, but we were also talking about some things that we do differently. Typically, it's much colder for me in the mornings than it is for Keli, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she's running in 70s in the morning. I like to imagine that she is because lately, I've felt like I live in the frozen tundra.
That said, we've found that even though it's colder for me, I run with less layers than she does. Unless it's really, really cold (single digits or below zero), I wear a long-sleeved tech tee and Danskin slim sculpt pants. I also wear Mizuno Breath Thermo Run Glove but my hands usually get so warm that I take them off and toss them in my driveway by the end of the first lap. I also wear the Mizuno Breath Thermo Headband . I do keep that on through the whole run and it is excellent for keep my head warm without being too hot. Otherwise, I don't wear anything else. I can't stand to have a ton of things on me, so I won't wear hats or extra layers. I do have a pair of Mizuno Running Women's Breath Thermo Layered Tight but they're pretty heavy, so I only wear them if it's really cold. The Danskin pants that I wear are thin and don't add any extra warmth. Obviously I'm not a layering person and prefer to start out my runs a little cold instead of overheating! The Mizuno line is great for winter running because it turns sweat into heat. I have no idea how it works, but it does.

Now, let's hope that winter actually goes away now, because honestly, I'd like to put the gloves and headband away!