Exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins make you happy...

I have been struggling for the past few weeks with low energy.  As I was thinking through what the cause could be {icky weather, different food, not enough sleep} I couldn't figure it out.  When I finally got home on Sunday, around 6pm, I played with the dogs for a little bit and laid down on the couch to watch some TV.  Next thing I knew it was 9:30pm...  I slept for 10 interrupted hours that night, in addition to that 2 hour nap.  When my alarm went off that morning it took me an extra hour to get out of bed.

Monday was not off to a good start.  I knew that I needed to have a refocus of the week because if I let my terrible Monday morning mood continue I would be in a deep funk by now.  I decided the only way to get out of this mood was to get some endorphins going, because as we all know exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins make you happy and happy people just don't kill their husbands {or co-workers or random strangers}.  I started out the week with an easy 5K which totally did the job of flipping the mood switch.  I decided to double up the workouts for at least this week to try to reach my goal of completing the half marathon in under 2:45.

Today, I was going to do a 10K but decided that I should do half of the half and see what my time would be.  That way I have a guidepost or at least a realistic idea of what my finish time could be around.  I also decided to slow down a little bit and run the whole time.  I have been running at abut a 10:30 pace but I can only sustain that for 12 minutes at a time, so i slowed it down to a 12:00 pace and ran for 1.5 hours.  This was a break through for me.  I hit 7 miles in an hour and a half which is what I ran in the 10K a couple of weeks ago.  Doing the 7 miles and not wanting to cut off both my legs was a real turning point today.  Ever since April started, 4 whole days ago, I have been getting some anxiety about how far 13 miles really is and the fact that I have never run more than 7 miles at the same time in my entire life.  Today, was the first time that I felt like I could actually run 13.1 miles and not die and actually finish it in the time that I want to.

You always hear that working out gives you more energy, which always sounded pretty insane to me but right now I am on that bandwagon!   Let's hope I can keep this up for the next three weeks!