Running is hard

Okay, I'm feeling a little frustrated. Today, I intended to do 12 km...I ran outside for about 3 km and felt awful. The humidity didn't help. I ran back home and jumped on the treadmill, but I couldn't keep that up, either. I ran about 5 km in total. I haven't had very many pleasant runs since my last race. Most of the time, it feels hard, my legs feel like lead, my breathing is heavy, and my heart rate is through the roof. And I am not even running fast. Oh, and add in the humidity, and I'm sweating bullets. How did I ever consider this to be fun?? Lately, I've been feeling cranky and tired. And lazy, oh so lazy. I am frustrated seeing people running past me and beat myself up for being so slow. I realized today that I was showing a lot of signs of overtraining. But how could that be? My mileage has been barely 20 km/week these days. Okay. I am not having fun anymore, so it's time to refocus.

- get new shoes. My GT2110's have about 500km on them. That is not a lot for some people, but I find that I have to replace shoes by about 500 km because I start feeling new pains in my legs. I might buy another pair of 2110's, but I will certainly try on a few other pairs before I decide.

- add cross-training. I generally do very little of this. I usually try to run every other day, or at most two consecutive days. Three days in a row kills me. I am still climbing the stairs to my suite after my workouts, and I'm getting better at it. More cross-training will probably be beneficial.

- watch my diet. Summertime seems to bring with it all kinds of excuses to snack and eat frozen treats to stay cool. My appetite is wonky, so I end up grazing on not-so-healthy snacks all day, then not being hungry at mealtimes...but I eat my meals anyway. Not good. Haven't gained any weight yet, though.

Felt good to write that down. Hopefully I will start to feel better about running soon.