Weekly wrap up. Things took an interesting turn this week (for lack of a better word.)
Monday: 4mi easy, outside. Kind of overran this one, but I hadn't run outdoors in over a week, was finally feeling mostly better from my chest cold, and.....yeah. This was nice.
Tuesday: 4mi, treadmill. 120/30 intervals. I did 3mi running, and then a mile with some incline and brisk walking because my lungs were not having it again. And then I refereed 3 elementary basketball games in a row by myself. DH came along to help me out with any small issues (alternating possession arrow, etc) since this was my 3rd night ever refereeing. And since it was elementary, I left my watch on in "cardio" mode just to see what refereeing looks like for HR data. For the 3 games, pausing between the games, this ended up being 2:14 of herding cats chasing kids around. And we discussed what the graphs might mean for training load in some of the previous posts.
Wednesday: This was the opening day of firearm deer season, so I spent most of my day in a hunting blind with DS1. Spoiler alert: we only saw one very small buck. I swapped the run I was scheduled to do with Thursday's rest day so that I wasn't trying to do a run at 8pm.
Thursday: 4mi, treadmill. Lungs are finally "better," although I do have a lingering cough. And then it was back to the gym for another 3 elementary girls games. My first 2 games were much higher paced (much more skilled and older players) than Tuesday, and I ran a lot more. Of course, I took my watch off this night, so I didn't have any data, but the 2nd game especially was much more like a "run" based on feel than anything I did on Tuesday. And then on the way home, while I was talking to DH on the phone (it helps me decompress if I talk to him about the game, weird calls/situations, stuff I need to work on, etc. so I can get to sleep when I want to once I get home) he mentioned that our assigner wanted me to come work a freshman/JV boys scrimmage the following night. We decided that it would be a good idea, because need every bit of experience I can get right now.
Friday: 5mi run. I knew I had 2+ hours of chasing teenage boys up and down a full-sized basketball court, so I elected to not wear myself out beforehand. And then our assigner surprised me with hey you're going to learn 3-man mechanics tonight and myself or this other trainer are going to shadow you up and down the floor to help you figure this out. If he had told me that's what we were doing, I would have gotten my mechanics manual out and studied up on it BECAUSE I have specifically not looked at 3-person mechanics because I'm not scheduled for any games that would have 3 referees. I wanted to figure out 2-person mechanics, be solid on those, and then start working on 3-person. (If you're not familiar with basketball, generally speaking middle school games have 2 officials on the court with the teams, and JV/varsity games have 3 officials. How you move around the court, which areas you are supposed to watch, and so on are pretty different.) It was a lot, both physically and mentally. I was there for almost 2.5 hours and only sat out for one 8min running-clock period so someone else could rotate in.
Saturday: long run. Nope. I was absolutely exhausted. The YMCA assigner had, on Friday night, tried to get me to go referee 6 more games (with DH) on Saturday morning and I told her no. Plus, I had Thanksgiving grocery shopping to do, and a bunch of other stuff I had put off during the week that needed to get done.
Sunday: longrun-ish. OK. Not really a long run. 90 minutes. DH had taken DS1&2 downstate to Ford Field for the Lions game; this was DS1's belated birthday present. I had referee training from 3-5, but had to drive 40min to my SIL's to drop kids 3&4 off, and then another 50min to the training. I was doing all of the mom-math in bed on Saturday night and decided that I needed to be on the tread between 9 and 930am. I was successful in adhering to the timeline. Unfortunately, I also woke up with a massive headache. I was running 4min/1min intervals, and those were feeling OK, but the run in general was an absolute slog. I couldn't get in a groove because DD was constantly trying to push the incline buttons, almost rolling onto the tread deck on an exercise ball, asking me all of the questions, and generally being a 4 year old who wasn't getting 100% of my attention. That was probably a good thing in the grand scheme because we barely got out the door in time for me to do all of my driving around/dropping off, and being on-time. I can only imagine what me trying to get in another 60min of running would have turned my afternoon into.
Last week a question was "is reffing negatively impacting your running?"
The answer, now that I've done it a few times, is yes. Sort of. Impacting? For sure. Negatively? Not sure that's the right word. Cumulative fatigue is definitely happening when I'm running and reffing on the same days, multiple days in a week, so I feel like I will need to judge how much running I should do on days that I am scheduled for both.
As an example, tonight's games will be wildly different; the first game (7th grade) will not be competitive at all, but the 2nd game (8th grade) should be decent. Today's run is supposed to be 3 miles, with speedwork, and that seems reasonable since refereeing won't be overly taxing. But on Wednesday I'm refereeing 2+ hours of varsity boys scrimmages (yikes!) so I will probably take my scheduled 3mi run that day extra-easy, or skip it.
I'm also a bit nervous about next week already because it's supposed to be one of my biggest weeks for mileage (30mi), and I also referee 3x....Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with a 13mi long run on Saturday.
