and, it's june. hi there.
the tl;dr version of this post is: i ran. then i got sick. then i ran a half and was slow but didn't die much at all. then it was now and i'm cross-training a lot and running HTC at the end of august.
maybe you want slightly more? well, slightly more is gonna happen.
continuing in the vein of last december, i ran three days a week and logged every run for all of january, february, march and half of april. those logs show that i was consistent, that i wasn't fast, that i was dodging ice a lot of the time, that i could run a 5k pretty well on the treadmill, and that runs longer than an hour were really rare. foreshadowing: half marathons take more than an hour.
the second half of april and first half of may threw a month long wrench into my running works (wait, ow, that sounds terrible)... in the form of a weird-ass never-gonna-kill-me ear/throatache flu, which left me with way less energy than normal. it was pretty low-level brutal, actually, and it meant i ran slow, and not much, and sometimes just walked. actually that last part was fairly demoralizing: on two separate occasions during that time, i went for a walk in the river valley that was longer than a half marathon! ... but i just couldn't make myself run, and i couldn't tell if it was that it would have been physically really unpleasant or (more scary) if i just couldn't will myself to care enough. ugh. unsettling.
by mid-may i was moving again, but by now i had only two weeks to reboot before... running a half-marathon in Toronto! which i had agreed to run with hardly-ever-seen friends, and two of us were coming from different countries/time zones, and it was a whole get-together production and i wasn't going to just NOT do it even though my brain was quietly screaming um, why don't you not do it? ... i would like to say that i have been running long enough that i knew deep down i *did* have the base stamina for it, even if the backhalf was going to suck, but then again i thought that a year before when i ran that april half marathon and then it turned out the race was so hard because i was coming down with, er, mono.
SO. no illusions -- i thought i could probably do it, but maybe it would all end horrifically. oh, and i bought new shoes a week before because all my good racing shoes got too old at the same moment? yeah, it was a great lead-up.
anyway: the race was way hotter than it had been, and so i ran even slower than i might have, and i actually walked for enough seconds to send a text to my friends at the finish TWICE! ... with 2km and 1km to go... so this tells you much my head was in the game by then. however, i made it that far, and i didn't completely blow it, and my time was 2:05 exactly. given that the course was quite flat, that's pretty close to PW for me, but it wasn't a complete rout. observing how i felt during the race, and that the day after i was walking 90% normally, i think it's fair to conclude that my winter base training from before the death illness had equipped me to run a 15k race just fine, and those last 6k were really just run on willpower -- some of which i had, and some of which i didn't.
not my finest hour, but far from my ...least fine. what the hell is the opposite of finest hour. my thickest hour? moving on.
in the couple weeks since then, i've been running maybe twice a week, but also getting back into some serious cross-training. i have been struggling on and off with a cranky ankle that i can't really understand -- it seems to be exacerbated by lateral movements of various sorts, so actually running at least on the road is not bad, but there's been a fair bit of dicking around regarding whether i can run, should run, might run, etc... so. in the meantime, swimming and gymming and so on.
my last two runs were ankle-tentative but successes. both were about 4 miles; the first one very cautious and on the treadmill, the second one starting out cautious and then increasingly less cautious as the rain became a downpour complete with thunder, lightning and wrath of weathergod... but the ankle is still fine. i should ice it before i go to bed, though, right? and in the morning i hope to run for a full hour, and i hope it will be good.
right now my next race is Hood to Coast at the end of August. that seems... rather sooner than you'd think? but i'm pretty sure as long as i keep this ankle in line that i'll be fine. i *think* i could probably run it tomorrow and survive. ... anyway, let's not try that.
one other thing? 2015 has also been the year where i start doing all the yoga. at least: all the yoga videos. tons of them! in particular all the videos on a particular youtube channel, and ... yeah, you'd think they would have done more for me? i don't know; in the moment i feel like they are good stretches and strengtheners, and it's not like i don't sweat, but i don't really see my flexibility or relevant strength improving. so, hmm, not clear.
... aaaand, we're up to speed.
i guess i shouldn't say i want to start runblogging again? but the thing is, i want to start runblogging again. so, well, that might happen. here, the new yogi in me (#yeahnonotreally) will 'set an intention' on this point: the plan for the next week will be to run three times, and wear my garmin at least one time to see how i'm doing wrt pace and consistency. let's see if i can manage that and report back.
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