More Wine & a Recovery Smoothie...

Joy here...Okay, so on Tuesday night (as per my last post) we had friends over and drank too much wine. So after Wednesday's run, we ended up not running on Thursday (no tempo workout for me) and instead had more wine. Do you think this makes sense? Well, it made perfect sense at the time. I mean, who wouldn't swap out a workout for a night out with champagne? Out we went to the local wine bar for a few drinks before coming home to put our feet up and pour ourselves one last nightcap. The plan was, "okay, we'll skip our tempo run on Thursday, but we'll make up for it on Friday." Ha! That never happened. I didn't run on either Thursday or Friday, so whether I liked it or not, I had to get myself out the door to run today (Saturday). But, of course, today was the penultimate stage in the Tour de France, and with Alberto Contador leading Andy Schleck by only 8 seconds, I had to watch the live stage to see how this battle royale would play out. It was a real nail-biter; at the first time check, Andy was up by 2 seconds! Anyway, what all this has to do with me and my wine soggy week of no running is that I waited until after today's live coverage of the Tour de France before running. So it was about 11:30am by the time we got out the door, and it was already hot and muggy. Since I missed the planned tempo run on Thursday, I couldn't afford to miss another run, so today's run was scheduled as my long run (hoping that I can make up for the missed tempo with a bike ride tomorrow). Last week I had that great 15km run, and so today I figured I'd be up for 16kms, and I was expecting it to be a fantastic run. I mean, heck, I just took two days off, right? Well, alas, it was a TOUGH run. At about the 9th km I had a killer stitch in my side. I mean, I thought that someone was reaching in and pulling out my internal organs. As I ran, trying my best to soldier through it, I was literally pinching the skin on my side figuring that the external pain of pinching myself was less painful than the internal stitch! As I was running, I was huffing and whimpering, and really, really, really wishing that I could pull the plug. But since I had been such a loser on Thursday and Friday by not running, I really didn't want to let myself throw in the towel. So I was having an internal battle with myself, with every bone, muscle, and organ in my body screaming for me to stop, and only the smallest corner of my brain trying to will my feet forward. I kept that up, and I am happy to say that I lasted the full 16kms of the planned run. It wasn't a great run, and it wasn't a fast run, but at least I completed it. That alone feels like a momentous victory. No one will be calling me up on the podium on the Champs Elysees tomorrow to give me a trophy, and no one will be pleased with my speedy time, but I'm proud that I was able to force myself to just keep going. Now I'm home, safe and sound, and happily showered and recovered, and decided that I deserve a chocolate and banana recovery smoothie. Instead of champagne or wine tonight, I'm treating myself to lactose-free chocolate milk, soy, one banana, ice, and whey protein all blended together. At least if I don't feel like waking up and running tomorrow, I can't blame it on something I drank!

Here are today's running stats:

Total time of 1:34:18 for a distance of exactly 16km at an average pace of 5:54min/km.

Over and out,

Joy