Blood donation/post-race week

Monday after the race weekend I donated blood. I always donate blood whenever I have a break (3-4 weeks) from races as it takes around 2 weeks for my body to recover from blood donation fatigue. 

This time I felt really weak after the donation. They also recommend no heavy lifting or exercise 8 hours after the donation. It's also the finals week and I had a lot of deadlines so I took 2 days off and did completely nothing (except work). 

Wednesday - went to the indoor cycling class. Kicked my butt as usual. Despite 2 days of resting, my legs were still tired. Not sure it's because of the races or blood donation. 

I was REALLY tired on Thursday. I felt like it's accumulated since the weekend. I tried to get out of bed in the morning to go for a run but I could not. Decided to sleep in and slept for 12 hours. It's also that time of the year when everything was due and needed to be done. I am usually stressed out and that always affects my exercise routine. 

Friday was a little bit better. I was not as tired as the day before so I went out for a 5-mile run in my neighborhood.

This picture was from the drive to Hudson for the Saturday run. 

Saturday - S. wanted a recovery run after her O24 (she ran 100K at that race). She was looking for 10ish miles starting at 6.30am. I ran with her for 10 miles before I went to the bike clinic hosted by Cleveland Tri Club. I then biked 14 miles with the group. Legs were still exhausted at the beginning of the run and then I felt better. I was still slow and tried to keep an easy pace during the run, which worked out pretty nicely.

Originally, I thought about going to the Sunday run with CVTR in Brecksville. I woke up and was still tired from yesterday exercises. My body was screaming for yoga. I went to the hot yoga class at Prana Yoga thinking it was going to be another stretching/easy class. I was wrong. Since there were only 5 students in the class (Mother's day), the teacher decided to do a handstand-focused class. After warming up the body, she let us practice handstand (a pose that I've never imagined I would do at the point). I finally kicked up to handstand against the wall. yay. Exhausting but fun class. 

Now I don't have a race to train for anymore. After the trail race last weekend, I thought about signing up for a 50 miler at Mohican but the price was very high (135 dollars). So, I'm still deciding if I should run 50 miles at Mohican or wait for the double marathon at Run with Scissors in October. Will see how my training goes and how the ankles feel.