Good Days & Bad Days

This week has been full of ups and downs. I started the week on very little sleep and stomach cramps that made me want to stay in bed all day. Despite feeling like complete crap I managed to get in a pretty good trainer ride Monday night. Maybe it had something to do with watching the Biggest Loser Season Finale.

Tuesday morning I had a 50 minute endurance run on the schedule. No big deal, or so I thought. This run was rough from the minute it started. I couldn't settle into a pace and felt like I was working way too hard for the pace I was going. I thought slowing down would help but that just felt worse. I'm pretty sure I counted down the minutes as soon as I started running. I desperately wanted to have a great run but it just wasn't happening.

I then went to the pool to get in a swim. Despite having such a bad run I figured I would feel okay swimming. Wrong. Not only were my legs tired but my arms felt like I had bricks attached to them. I started to feel better the longer I swam but I still felt far from normal.

I went back to the pool yesterday for my longest swim in probably a couple years. When I started swimming I realized my crappy workouts weren't just reserved for Tuesday. I felt even worse and was getting frustrated. I was coming off of a rest week so there was no real reason to feel so depleted. Yet I struggled to complete each and every one of those 3600 yards.

track running in the dark

I had a track workout scheduled for last night that I was increasingly nervous about given how bad I'd been feeling. I went into the workout dreading it, not because it was the first time back at the track since last summer, but because I didn't know if I could deal with another terrible workout.

Armed with my new Saucony Mirages I went to the track not expecting to get much out of it. During my warm up I thought about my shoes and making sure there was no pain or discomfort. When I checked my watch to see how much I had left I saw I was averaging 8:39 like it was no big thing. I started thinking that maybe this would be the workout I so desperately needed to give me a confidence boost.

LOVE the Mirage

The main set of my workout was 4 x 400 at 1:50 with 200 jog recovery. I was confident I could hit these paces but was surprised by how well I did.

1:39, 1:35, 1:37, 1:35

This workout was better than good. I left the track full of confidence and my faith restored in my ability to not completely suck at all things running and swimming. Honestly, I needed this workout in more ways than one. Before those few days of shitty workouts I needed a confidence boost. Couple low self-esteem with 3 consecutively terrible workouts and the result is not pretty. And instead of being nervous about tomorrow's long run I'm actually really excited because even though I know it's going to be challenging, I know I can do it.

How do you get through a bad workout? Have you ever had a period of bad workouts that really got you down?