Sleeping Is a Beauty

Working out and not sleeping properly is like watering a plant without sunlight - muscles just don't grow. So after resuming work full-time this week, combined with my newborn's sporadic sleep schedule, I try to save my most intense runs for Friday or Saturday, when I can wake up a little bit later than usual the next day - if my kids let me. I ran a mile today to warm up for sprints on my favorite grassy hill, which I later found covered with sprinklers on full blast. Quite disappointing, but at least I now know how they keep it so green.

Determined not to let my one intense training day go to waste, I ran three more miles at a moderate pace around the neighborhood, followed by a 6:28 mile on the treadmill. A couple of seconds slower than my target sub-20:00 5k pace, I wanted to know what it felt like again to run at that speed for more than just a couple of minutes. And it felt awful, but necessary. I realize I'll have to run more of these more often, and at a faster speed, if my sub-20 goal is going to happen. Can I triple that mile distance, while keeping up that pace up and more? Maybe, so long as I sleep on it.