running for the holidays

i am always pretty good at keeping running when i go home for christmas, and this year felt quite solid. the highlight (i mean the running highlight, excluding all the company and the food and the skating and laughing and so on) was a ten mile race on boxing day.

i was ... a bit hesistant going in. was i getting sick? would it freezing rain? should i drop down to 4 miles? but nope. i did the damn thing, and it felt good! i honestly think i got sick at mile 6 and my body said "well, this really seems like the wrong time" and just fought it off by mile 9. (please nobody tell me that isnt a thing; xmas running miracle.)

there was also the incident in which we ran past a lake-side beaver, a HUGE guy, at mile 3, and when we came back past at mile 7, he was still there, being huge, and as i ran past i also saw there was a man dressed in a full-body xmas tree costume, running the race (beating me, in fact)... and that was a memorable enough moment, running between a stoic beaver and a racing tree, but if youve been here since the beginning and you remember the penguin who ran near me through the canadian border at the detroit marathon? ... yeah turns out its the same guy.

of course.

the race was on paper a success also -- 9:20 miles, nothing to write home about but not embarrassing to me, and my final time was nearly exactly double my 5 mile time so i felt smart. i ran without my garmin and without music -- just ticking along and not getting too stuck in my head, and i never walked (except during gatorade) and the two biggish hills were not a problem, and i think this was all excellent news.

... news that means i am signing up for the 25k on night trails in early february right???
close to saying yes.
a couple more long runs will clinch that. i will try one on saturday.

onward.

habits!

yesterday it was snowing and i was in a hurry but i found time for 75 minutes on river trail paths, and i even discovered the all season bathrooms, so i think everyone can agree it was a success.

laying down the baseline of 60+ min runs is going well! maybe next weekend i will push up to 90 mins. or at least 9 miles. mind you, we got like 10 inches of snow today... well. onwards.

monday afternoon obstacles

here is an incomplete list of things that cropped up attempting to prevent me from going for a long run on monday:

- my other half has a deadly cold which caused him to cough or sneeze violently at least once an hour on saturday and sunday nights; assume this was as restful as it sounds,,,

- the dog is usually happy to hang out in the car if i drive her to the start of my run route, but as soon as we got there she helpfully vomited on the backseat, requiring us to return home, clean the backseat, regroup...

- it got cold. and rainy. and windy. and dark.

BUT I DONE IT ANYWAY. i left the cleaned up soothed dog at home, i got more warmly dressed, i drove back out to campus where it's well enough lit to run at night without shock or injury, and i ran for a full 70 minutes straight. BOOM. one more in the bank.

i'm going to count that as the first of this week's runs. thursday morning i will do tempo, and saturday i will do speed. go team.

friday morning and saturday night

yesterday morning: i had told myself i was going to do speed work. it was early and my body was unimpressed. but i ran 5k and some of it was faster than i would have liked. there's this park, a mile from me? and it has a .35 mile loop. so i ran to there and back at like 9:15/mile pace, and then i ran the loop three times, at 8:20/mile pace. with jogging about in between. ... as they always say, the best speed workout is the one you actually do. so, that's not a normal one, but it's the one i did.

today: i had told myself i was going to do a long run, right? break out of that 50-mins mold? ... nope. my other half has something that's been diagnosed as not strep, but close enough, and i'm just resting today. i'm pretty sure it's what my body needs. i am going to drink some hot cider with bourbon and sit on soft things. ugh. ... i teach at the gym tomorrow twice, so that will have to be the weekend's exercise. it's 6:15pm and i'm seriously thinking of napping, so this was probably the right move.

eh, you win some you lose some.
more soon.

every road is 45-50 minutes long

my new current running goal is, oddly, my old current running goal. maybe it's my always current running goal? anyway: it's three runs a week. one tempo, one somehow hard, and one long. the somehow hard is supposed to include hills or speed or something.

in the last week, i've run three times. so, that's good.
did those three runs fit the criterion? ... er, no.
they were, instead, exactly the same run: 45-50 minutes, at a moderate but not easy pace.

they were all different places -- different times of day, different towns, different elevation profiles -- but i gotta tell you, it's hard to find an actual hill in mid-michigan, so i wouldn't describe any of them as actually hilly. (ann arbor does have real hills, but they overlap with the strangely large part of town that's dramatically underlit, so this time of year you can't do hill after 5pm without breaking your neck.) so -- ok, that's some running, but that's not actually what is required.

the thing is: they felt extremely different. on saturday, running 45-50 minutes at that pace felt like damn fool hard work. today, that same distance and pace, with rather more hills, felt like swimming along in running butter, and when i finished i felt i had done no work and should do it agian. ... this is a tricky thing about training -- when to push, when to cruise for better results next time, when to listen to your lungs vs. your legs vs. your brain. ... yeah, almost never listen to your brain.

anyway. i'm one for two. we'll call today's run the 'hard' one, insofar as they were inclines. thursday, i will get up before teaching and run faster! and saturday, i will run for longer than the damn 45-50 minutes! and then next week i'll do it again.

i have two 2017 goal races right now: one in february and one in march. but i'm not going to let myself start planning for them for real until i convince myself i'm going to do the real training thing, not the fake three-same-runs-a-week thing. so (if you're here to begin with)... stay tuned.

hey, and then it was now

i haven't been blogging for the last oh, 15 months. but i have still been running.

my last post in august 2015 was anxious, and three weeks before Hood to Coast. which i did run, and it was hard and weird and worth it. maybe you should watch the documentary about the race. 200 mile relays are very human activities.

this year, 2016... well, i am still here. i ran three halfs: one in february in new orleans, one in june on trails in the upper peninsula near paradise, michigan, and one a couple weeks ago in fairly flat and downhill roads and lakefront in hamilton ontario. i am running slow these days -- my road times are like 2:06 territory -- but i am not too broken. last weekend i ran a combined 15k race, and it wasnt too bad?

so. i think it is time to get back to actual training. and actual blogging about it, which neednt be interesting for anyone but myself. (setting the bar low, all the better to trip over it.)

i signed up for a 10 miler on boxing day, and an old friend's cajoling the other month started me thinking for real about running Around the Bay (a 30k) in march. i have not broken the details of this actually-training plan to my other half yet. ... perhaps i can just let it sneak up on him? not that i walk around very delicately after a long run.

... today is the day after this local thanksgiving, and our fridge is jammed with leftovers and my body is sore although at least this year i learned from previous pains and wore Supportive Shoes while cooking all of yesterday. life of glamour. at any rate. now i will suit upmand go for a contemplative run in the late november gloom, running past dead things and looking for signs that now is the time to be reborn. you know, just a little bit reborn. it happens. we will see.