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.