Whirl Wind Week

How is it Thursday? I feel like it should be the beginning of the week right now.

Life has been so crazy and chaotic the past few months between the pressures of my full time job and then having two freelance jobs on the side that I looked up and all of a sudden summer had ended and here we are a month later and I barely know where September went.

I thought when I finished up my first freelance project in the beginning of September that I would breathe a sigh of relief but unfortunately the second one proved to be stress times a thousand plus I was transitioning into a new role with more responsibilities at my “real” job.  So no dice finding relief there.

Add to all this the pressure I put on myself for these fall half marathons and continuing my lifting regime and at times I did wonder what the hell I was doing, and the why behind it all.
Now the second freelance project is wrapping up (another success!) and I am just trying to decompress and resume some semblance of normalcy to my life. Whatever that may entail.

The truth of it all, is that I love it. I love the balancing act. I love feeling accomplished and I love knowing that at the end of the day I kicked ass doing it all. Both events that I worked received accolades and the clients thrilled with the results, and last week was told by my VP what a great job I have been doing at work. Add to that my running success, 13 minutes off my PR and then a week later another half at 1:57 and I am one happy camper. Sure, some people think that I am nuts and I do acknowledge that I take in too much at times, but I just can’t handle not having a full schedule. I am planning on taking some time off from the side projects at least for a month or two so that I can focus on my full time job as well as having myself a little more of a social life. I plan on using my extra time to ramp back up my lifting schedule, since the past few weeks I have been way more focused on the running. I don’t want to lose all the gains that I have made. Need a little more “lift” action on the blog!

So where have I been as far as running since Sunday? Well for a change, I listened to my overly tired beat up body. After the half Sunday I was basically on conference calls and doing work for hours. Monday I worked about 16 hours pretty much all of that on my feet and then a few hours of sleep and repeated on Tuesday. Moral of the story, I did not run either day for the sake of my tired body. Smart decision right, I am impressed when I make one.

Brings us to yesterday and I was literally jumping out of my skin ready to run. And run I did. I had a blissful run after work. Humidity was kind of high so it was a sweaty one, but a little over 7 miles and I felt so damn good. I felt like I could have gone forever and my pace actually felt a little slow. I tried to dial it down  when starting but my body wasn't having it and I just settled in to what felt normal.

 

 

Dripping with sweat = glorious

I always love the views on my runs of the city and of course I couldn’t help for a little photo opportunity. Never gets old.

 

Also this song made an appearance on my playlist and I am obsessed. I think that I ran for about 3 miles with it on repeat. Perhaps threw up a little fist pump while I was at it.

Love me some beats!

I also finally got my food prep mojo back. With how busy I have been the past couple of weeks I hadn’t done a good food prep in a while. That doesn’t mean that I have been eating like crap or anything but I have been buying a little more on the go. Spending too much at the salad bar at lunch at the office, not bringing in my greek yogurts or oatmeal and buying them. Basically just wasting money. But look at this gorgeous display of food ready to grab and go. Being prepared is half the battle!

Roasted veggies for days! And of course ground turkey for protein.

I’m hoping that the rain holds off today and that I can get another one in tonight similar mileage and then a quick one tomorrow morning. Because as usual my weekend is a bit of craziness. Date after work on Friday then heading back towards home for a wedding Saturday afternoon/night followed up by the Staten Island Half Marathon on Sunday! Because you know getting home from the wedding around 2am and then running a half a few hours later is clearly the stuff that sane people do. Not to mention week number 3 in a row of half’s! This just makes me so happy. I can’t wait to run it. If my body feels good I am planning to go for another PR. I definitely won’t next week since it is a half in Central Park and I know those hills will deter me a little. Although you never know. I think I am more scared of hills and how they make me perform than the actual reality that they aren’t that bad. I am going to try and be better with what I eat before the race although with a date and wedding that isn’t looking entirely promising! But I can keep on telling myself that!