I was supposed to be in Maine this weekend for my college roomie’s baby shower but there’s a lot going on this little life of mine, and I just couldn’t make it up there.

So Friday night, I found myself in town with a long run on my schedule and no running dates planned.

UH OH.

I usually run a few long runs each training cycle solo, but not usually this early in the cycle when I’m getting used to long runs again.

Luckily Ashley, Meghan and Jen had a long run party planned that they let me crash.

Friday, I’d had about 4-5 miles planned and my legs would literally have none of it. They have been feeling incredibly fatigued lately, and about 5 minutes into my run, I’d already felt like I was at mile 20 of a marathon. Um, no. I didn’t want to push my already-fatigued legs into a dangerous zone, so I bagged it and asked Jess what I should do about my long run. She said that hopefully the day of rest would be good for my legs and to give my long run a try, and if my legs still hated me, to bag it after 4-5 miles.

I met up with the girls in Union Square and hoped for the best. We ran east and then south down the East River. (See our full route on Ashley’s blog.) The first few miles were a little rough, but they always are. I just kept hoping that my legs would cooperate and I’d be able to finish the run. It’s been a long time since I doubted I could finish a long run, so that was an incredibly disheartening feeling to have.

I tried to not look at my watch and just to take each mile as it came as I chatted away with the girls, who were godsends yesterday. Having them there to distract me from my tired legs was wonderful.

Our run took us around the tip of Manhattan, and I got weirdly nostalgic for my old apartments down there. (I lived down there my first 2.5 years in the city.)

We split at 9 miles, but I still had three more to go, so I ran up another mile, back down and home. Although I’ve now run 12+ miles quite a few times, that feeling of satisfaction after a long run never goes away.

On tonight’s run, I found this serene little patch of a beach somewhere between Chelsea Piers and the ferry terminal. My legs still felt fatigued and I ran at a much slower pace than usual, but I listened to a Jillian Michaels podcast and had an amazingly calm run.

Solo runner or group runner? And what the eff do you do when your legs feel super-fatigued like this? I’m trying to foam roll more, focus on making sure I’m “fueling” well and I’m going to take an Epsom bath tonight, but would love to hear your tips.

Hi! While I despise the phrase “In Case You Missed It” with the fire of a thousand suns (it reminds me of my days as a writer at a political trade magazine where I would get all-caps subject lines of IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: CANDIDATE SHAKES GRANDMAS’ HANDS IN SMALLEST TOWN EVER or equally inane things), I did want to give a little shout-out over here to my own side project.

I want to help you make your blog awesome! As a social media professional and blogging dork, I’ve served as an informal consultant to my blogger friends for quite some time, and after getting lots of inquiries lately, I decided to make it formal.

So, if you want to make your blog awesome, click on over to makeyourblogawesome.com. (I’m actually really surprised that domain wasn’t taken.) I probably won’t talk about that much on here, but I will be putting up a nice button in my sidebar so you can easily find this again if you’d like to. I’ve always considered my Twitter part professional/part blog/part dumb stuff I say/part dog pictures, so if you do want to learn more social media stuff for free and you’re not already following me…do so.

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On to the running stuff!

The first week of marathon training is always fun for me. It’s all shiny and new, and I’m excited. I usually find the next month pretty boring as it’s a lot of base building, and your long runs don’t yet feel like they’re marathon-training runs. They’re just long. But because I want so badly to do sub-4 this year, Jess is whipping me into shape early with longer runs, higher mileage and speedwork earlier.

She also has more faith in me than I do myself, so this week, she’s been trying to not assign paces, because she thinks that I can run faster than I think I can. Monday’s run was a 4-mile easy run with strides at the end, but today’s run was …

I don’t know why they scare me so much, but they do. I’d never actually done them before today. I was supposed to do them just before the D.C. Half. Oops! They just so happened to not happen. I was supposed to do them yesterday, and I ended up not running at all because I didn’t want to/was scared to do them. (I realize that now. Yesterday, I just made excuses. Fail.)

If you’re not familiar with mile repeats, you typically warm up for a mile or two, and then run a mile at a pretty balls-to-the-wall pace, recover for a bit and then repeat. According to this Runner’s World article, you get the same benefits of a tempo but with less fatigue because of the recovery.

Sweet.

On my specific plan was: 1.5 mile warmup, 3 mile repeats with 3-minute recovery and a mile cooldown.

FINE, JESS, I’LL DO IT.

I motivated myself by putting on one of my favorite shoes – the speedy AND gorgeous New Balance 1600s.

Of course, I waited until I basically couldn’t wait any more to go tonight and left around 7. I hoped that would mean at least it’d be cooler, but not much. I shuffled over to the West Side (my warmups have been really slow lately), ran an extra half-mile…and…go time.

I took off for that first mile and tried so hard not to look at my watch.

7:26

WOO REST INTERVAL.

Every day I’m shufflin’…

Oh, another one of these?

I ran another half mile and then turned around so I could get home without having to walk too much.

8:02.

OMG REST INTERVAL, I LOVE YOU.

Crap, ANOTHER ONE? Okay, it’s the last one.

7:52.

The last one was really hard. I struggled the entire time to get even a decent breath in. My legs were exhausted. At around .6 miles, I thought, “eh, I can just stop here.”

But that wouldn’t make me any stronger, right?

What workout do you hate?