slow and steady

...is not going to win me any races.

luckily today was my short and slow day, so it didn't matter. i was definitely slow tonight but i was purposely trying to hold a lower-than-normal heartrate for an easy day, and i successfully did that at least. normally i aim for around a 150 hr, but with my recent inability to sleep through the night and overall feeling of exhaustion i didn't think it'd hurt to take it extra-easy.

for the past few nights i've been waking up in the middle of the night and staying up for a bit before finally falling back asleep. true to form, this happened again last night. i've even been going to bed at a fairly decent hour (with the exception of saturday night) and getting around 8 hours (or more) of sleep per night. so basically, i don't know what is going on.

i read a couple articles about overtraining here and here that mention symptoms such as fatigue, sleeping problems, hormone imbalance, or onset of allergies/asthma. fatigue, eh i don't know if i'd claim that one. yeah i've been tired lately but i wouldn't say it's anything more so than normal. sleeping issues, no doubt about that one; hormone imbalance, well if you ask j he'd probably say i've been more moody but that's not a very fair assessment now is it. allergies/asthma, those aren't much different than i'd expect them to be for this time of year either.

on one hand i don't really think i've been training all that intensely, but i also realize just because i am not training at the same level as paula radcliffe doesn't necessarily have to mean i'm not overworking my body. anyway, i'm just hoping this is only a few days of feeling 'off'. i still have about 8 weeks until the goofy challenge and some "time off" (...weeks of slow, easy, relaxed running for hopefully around 30mpw).

pm run: 5.3 miles, 52:09 (9:50 avg pace), avg/max hr (137/156)