I considered this past week to be a moderate success. Any time I get in something more than just my usual three runs, I’m doing okay, I think. I never really have to motivate myself to get out the door and run: it’s my favorite exercise; it’s simple; I’d do it even more often if I weren’t so injury prone. The other activities, however? Classes that have to be fit into a schedule? Bike trainers that have to be moved and set up? Enh. Those things are easy to skip. So If I do ANY of them, good for me.

From last week’s rainy ten-miler.

Monday: Bike Trainer. Fifty minutes on the bike trainer while watching an episode of The Vampire Diaries. I go hard during the commercial breaks (about 2 minutes) and go steady, high cadence but easier gear, during the show. This seems like a pretty decent workout, but I think I could be taking it a little further.

Tuesday: Three-Mile Run. I normally do my Tuesday run on the treadmill after bootcamp, but this week I allowed myself to sleep in and skip bootcamp, so I took the run outside, setting my Garmin for the intervals. I did ten minutes warming up at an easy pace, then ten minutes of slow-fast intervals, then a ten-minute cooldown. I can’t see the paces on my watch screen when I have it set for intervals, so I wasn’t sure how fast I was going until I could look at the stats on my computer at homes. Turns out I was not going that fast (9:10-9:20 when I’d been aiming for 8:30). Oops. I need to figure out how to set my watch screen so I can see what’s going on.

Wednesday: Rest. 

Thursday: Run. Five miles around my normal neighborhood route. It was cold and sunny out and just the perfect weather for fall running. I LOVE IT. I had intended to do a tempo run, but it turned out that a harder effort didn’t result in a faster pace. I don’t know; this week seemed to be just a bad week for speed.

Friday: Rest. 

Saturday: Rest.

Sunday: Run. Seven (point something) miles around town. It was a lovely day out and the run mostly went well, except for two things: 1) a strange dog (large pit-bull-type mix) followed me for about two miles, and 2) I got some persistent stomach trouble about half a mile from home and had to switch to a walk. (I’d been aiming for eight miles.) The dog thing was just annoying — he seemed like a pretty friendly dog, but I had no idea where he came from or what his deal was, and I could NOT shake him. I was about to just give in to the idea that I had a companion for the entire run, but then another runner crossed my path and the dog followed her instead. I wonder what happened to the dude. I hope he found his way home!

The current week is already shaping up to be better than the past few weeks have been in terms of exercise frequency and variety. We’re finally done with most of the wedding-related meetings and errands, so that’s not disrupting my schedule, and work is a little lighter this week as well. ‘Bout time!