Down With The Sickness

So I decided to play hookey from work today. I woke up at six with my alarm, planning to get a run in before work, and decided to just not bother. After a late-ish night last night and the inordinate stress of this summer I just decided to take a mental health day. Surprisingly (or, I guess, unsurprisingly) my office cannot actually function when I'm not there and I spent most of my "day off" working from home. Happily I actually managed to get away just before lunch, on the nicest running day of the summer. On an afternoon that's 75 degrees and partly cloud there's no way I was just going to waste away at my desk. I got away long enough to run my normal 5k loop through the Fort Greene Park runner's trail. From the very beginning of this run my calves hurt. I was in such a hurry to get out there that I hardly stretched at all and as a result I was feeling it for pretty much all of the run. I pushed through it hoping that the soreness would fade but it never really did. I feel like I was more out of breath than I should have been as well. I was fully ready to write another blog entry about pushing through and enduring through yet another bad run. But then, as I slowed to my cooldown walk, I ended my workout on MapMyRun and saw that I finished the loop more than a minute faster than I'd run it on Sunday. Don't get me wrong, it's still slower than my racing speed. But feeling like shit and still running faster than your last training run is pretty great. On my volleyball off-week I'm trying to get as many runs in as I can - social life not-withstanding - and so I'm hoping I can try the loop again tomorrow after work. Today I wasn't even pushing myself and bettered my time. Let's see what tomorrow brings. Run easy.