Burnt Out and Burnt

First I want to take a moment to recognize the tragedy of the plane crash at the San Francisco airport Saturday afternoon.

I haven’t gone into much depth with my workouts lately, so let’s talk about that here!

Here’s a good one for you to try. It’s tabata style, meaning you work for 20 seconds, and then rest 10 seconds. You repeat this 8 times, for a total of 4 minutes. In the following workout, you do a full tabata of each exercise. Hand release push ups are where you lower yourself chest to the ground, and then bring your hands up off the ground, and then back down and complete a push up. 

We did this at Crossfit Tuesday night, and combined with a warm up full of Romanian deadlifts, my legs are still sore! I actually Rxed the deadlifts, at 95 pounds. 

So let’s go through some of the workouts this week. 

Monday: Abs class and Spin with one of my favorite teachers. I actually saw her at the Farmer’s market today!

Tuesday: 4 mile run-2 miles were intervals. Yoga class. Crossfit that evening with the above WOD. I also practiced handstands! I’ve never done them before and actually got kind of close against the wall. Between those and a ton of downward dogs after not much yoga, my shoulders were done. 

Wednesday: Morning spin, 4 mile run (split up. I hate the treadmill). A Jillian Michaels group exercise class. This class convinced me that I’m way too uncoordinated to teach any type of group exercise (hence why I want to teach spin. Not a whole lot of coordination is necessary).

Thursday: 10 mile easy bike ride

Friday: 4 mile run, Crossfit with this WOD:

10 Minute AMRAP

5 box jumps

7 burpees

10 dumbbell snatches

We worked on pull-ups then and my arms were sore. I also got a couple of double unders-progress!

Saturday: Crossfit. The WOD was:

400 m run

6 chin ups

10 push jerks

15 toes to bar (or knees…up in my case. I’m not that flexible)

It was a good one! I’m glad they are finally letting my lift the big weights! Heehee.

Ok, so I know this seems like kind of a lot of exercise. But my body seriously can handle it-crew was 2-a-days every day, and was a lot more intense. Plus, I’m doing a ton of different things so it’s not the same muscle groups every day. 

Ok, so I know this seems like kind of a lot of exercise. But my body seriously can handle it-crew was 2-a-days every day, and was a lot more intense. Plus, I’m doing a ton of different things so it’s not the same muscle groups every day. Right now I’m feeling good so I’m just going to go for it. You know how I was talking about how I lost so much muscle in my arms? I’ve done a lot of upper body strength stuff this week and I swear my arms have already grown. Crazy!

Next week is my heaviest week of half marathon training, so a lot of non-running stuff won’t be in there then. So let’s talk running. 

The title of this post pretty perfectly describes my last run. Burnt Out and Burnt. I made the mistake of doing 2 treadmill runs, both over my mental treadmill limit (which is 3 miles, if you’re interested. And that’s barely). The first one was okay, I did intervals which made it a little better. Then, I thought a 5 mile treadmill run on Wednesday morning would be a great idea. Hah. I gave up after a mile. I then did 3 more miles that evening on the treadmill (again. Yeah, I’m really smart). It was not fun. I can’t accurately describe my hate for the treadmill. I don’t get how people train for long races only on the treadmill!

Friday, I ran down at school after working at the lab. I was feeling pretty burnt out pre-run. This is the hard point of the training-the load gets heavier and you’ve been doing it for almost 2 months. Beth knows what I’m talking about! I had loosely been planning on trying to beat my last time for this particular run. ….And then I realized trying to do a pace run when I’m already burning out would be stupid, so I ran un-timed and un-Garmined (yes that’s a word). Plus, my Garmin was dead. I always wondered what it takes for it to run out of battery-I used it for about a month before bothering to charge it and it was fine. This time, I accidentally left it on, which I figured out when my purse beeped and it was dying. Sad. 

Anyway, running without my Garmin was a good decision. But the run wasn’t very pleasant, and it was 100% my fault. I wore my new shoes and didn’t wear my anti-blister socks. I figured it would be fine since it was only 4 miles but things didn’t really work out that way. I think my new shoes might be a size too big. My other Nikes have always been half a size down, but the guy at the store at first thought I’d be a full size up. Anyways, my feet were rubbing like crazy and burning up! At some point I didn’t know whether I’d be able to finish. The 4 mile run isn’t that important. I’d rather not finish and not have blistered feet for the 11 miler. I ended up finishing, but it wasn’t the prettiest thing. 

Where am I going with this? I need to be smarter about not burning myself out. Why run on the treadmill if I know I hate it? I just need to get the runs done, and not worry too much about speed, etc. And I feel better about tomorrow’s 11 mile run. The unfortunate thing is I need to start training for my Nike Women’s half like a week after I run this one. I think I’m going to train this a little differently though. I’m going to take an extra week off and jump into week 2 of the training plan, and I’m probably only going to run 3 days a week instead of 4. I think the plan is especially important the first time around, and it’s not worth burning out. So we’ll see how that goes! And since this post has had like no pictures, here are some scenes from my weekend. 

How do you prevent burn out?