40 by 40 Thoughts

sibling selfies: what happens when the kiddos find my phone

As I ran the trail 5k last week I thought about this goal and the races I'm choosing to run. I was contemplating running a trail half marathon this Saturday but still hadn't decided if I was going to do it. Some of the concerns running through my head:

I'm not trained for a half
I'm not trained for a long trail run
Quantity versus quality- more races or better training?
Walking isn't a bad thing

The conclusions I came to from those thoughts and others are these:

I'm willing to sign up for and complete races I might not otherwise do in the interest of completing a wide variety of races. 

Even though I'm not trained for a trail half marathon, I'll do it because I'm ok with walking a lot of it if I need to. The object here isn't to finish as fast as possible, it's to finish. This race is open to walkers so hopefully I won't be the slowest one out there.

I'm not an experienced trail runner: I've only done a couple 5ks and a rather disastrous 15k that was mercifully on the short side. I'm not against trail running, I just don't have many chances to improve my skills when the majority of my running is done on a treadmill. So I'm not putting any pressure on myself and I'm looking at Saturday's trail half as a long hike that I'll run parts of :)

In the meantime I'm trying to be more consistent with my mileage during the week as I attempt to get back in shape and build my endurance. It's a struggle still as I try to balance everything. Running while breastfeeding exacerbates my food issues (must. eat. all. the. things, even if they don't agree with me). Not that I am ever tempted to eat gluten (so not worth the pain), but finding carbs that agree with me and don't trigger food cravings isn't easy. Starches that don't agree with me tend to trigger cravings for more of those starches rather than leaving me with a satiated feeling. The energy I'm burning breastfeeding and exercising needs good quality fuel and that's where I run into trouble.

Last week I was able to hit the treadmill twice and run outside once. The outside run was a good one, in the rain again, which felt good, but my legs felt tired. I'm chalking up the fatigue to lack of sleep and nutrition that's not up to snuff. Despite that, I completed 3.67 miles in 45:13. I walked a total of .85 miles and ran the rest, so not too shabby. Combined with my treadmill time my mileage for the week was 8.29 miles.