Week 3 was pretty eventful. We ran in the rain and in the cold (and since I’m a day late, my run this morning was in 63 degree temperatures, so I’ve covered basically all the weather bases).

If I were to sum up week 3 in one word, that word would be “painful.”

Six miles was somehow a lot harder this week than it was last week. I struggled. At about 2.5 miles, I was convinced we were more than halfway done with the run, which made it fun to look down at my phone and see we had yet to break the halfway point.

I was also really sore for some reason. Saturday is my rest day, so I have no idea why my leg muscles hurt. But man, I was hurting.

On our Friday run, both of my feet were in pain for the entirety of our 4 miles. For some reason, the arches of my feet started aching the minute we started running, and kept bothering me for a few hours after the run. Now only my left foot hurts (and yes, it hurt for our long run yesterday and for this morning’s run).

I WebMD-ed it and came up with a number of scary-sounding running injuries. Haley says it’s probably just my shoes. Either way, I realized that I really don’t want to be forced to rest and stop running.

It used to annoy me when people complained about being sidelined from exercise because of an injury– I never understood that. Injuries = vacations! Now I get it: I’m on a schedule, I don’t have time to take a few weeks off!

I count this new-found realization as progress.