I totally skipped on two runs this weekend while at the beach, but I told myself this morning that I wouldn’t bail on this update, and that I would continue to hold myself accountable, poor training week or not.

After all, the marathon won’t care about the runs I did or didn’t get in.

So tonight, I set out to get my long run in, heat or not.

Now I can recap my last week of training. (It won’t take very long.)

Tuesday: 4 mile easy run on the treadmill because I was being a weenie about the heat.

Wednesday: A surprisingly great 7-mile tempo run on the treadmill

Thursday: travel day – had previously planned to take as a rest day. The only working out I did was climbing a lighthouse and lifting a lobster roll to my mouth.

Friday: Went to Flywheel with this sexy crew. (L-R: Ashley | Laura | Daria (who doesn’t have a blog…yet???) | and Blake!)

I’ll blog a bit more about our class when I write more about the weekend, but! Blake had reserved our classes, so our stats didn’t show up in my account, BUT I had a massive PR. My highest score before Friday was a 211 (birthday, lucky number!) but I got a 237 on Friday! I really struggle at Flywheel because I have a hard time matching the RPM they want us to get up to, but I had a good-for-me class Friday. I’d tried to get into SoulCycle instead, but it filled up by approximately 12:00:01 on Monday.

When we planned on Flywheel on Friday, I’d planned to shift my 13-miler and 6-miler to Saturday and Sunday. I slept in on Saturday, went down by the pool…and got to chatting. Before I knew it, it was nearly noon, freaking hot and we were leaving for an afternoon party. We’d planned on leaving on Saturday evening, but ended up staying until Sunday morning. I dropped everyone back off in the city, headed out to NJ, and immediately took a nap.

So…yeah. Not my finest effort this weekend, but I acknowledge this and now realize that for any other beach weekends with friends this summer, I’ll have to get my long run out of the way before I head out of town (like I did last year) so that I only have a shorter run.

Today: I’m still going to sneak this into last week’s training. Like I said above, I pushed myself to get tonight’s run in since I’d regretted slacking this weekend. I started the run pretty miserable – mad at myself for slacking, knowing my pace was going to suck and with a bit of a headache from my pupils still being a bit dilated from an eye doctor appointment today. I left a bit before 7 so that hopefully it would cool down as much as possible while I could still get some daylight. I was supposed to run 13 this weekend, but I knew that probably wouldn’t happen tonight. I told myself first anything over 6 would be good, and then I forced myself to run far enough away from home that I’d have to do at least 9.

I ran down the East side, over the Brooklyn Bridge, back over the Manhattan Bridge and up through Chinatown to Union Square to get to an even 9, and I called it a day. I was a little bummed when I finished at a slow pace, and when I Instagrammed the picture above, Victoria reminded me of the heat index/pace chart you can use to feel faster. I never used to struggle like this in the heat, so I’d been chalking it up to getting older, heavier, slower, something, but I’m going to go with the heat thing. Since it is pretty damn hot and humid out, after all.

I found the Jack Daniels Running Calculator, and it said I was running about 27 seconds slower per mile because of the heat. While even that pace is a bit slower than I usually run for mid-distance runs like this, it makes me feel a little better.

Mileage total: A whopping 20 miles last week. Awesome. Onward and upward this week! Focuses: getting back to yoga, not freaking out too much over pace, and just focusing on training in general.

Does the heat really affect you or can you usually just run through it…like I used to be able to do?