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.

keeping on

last sunday, six days ago, i went to the gym and did a fairly typical workout. it involved slightly more being on the ball of my foot than many workouts i do, but nothing memorable. that night my right foot was kind of sore, where the toes meet the foot.

and it's been sore every since. FUCK.

... there's been a little bit of bruising. there has been much ice, much speculating, much fretting. however, i have also run twice and it has seemed ok? i don't know. and i think it is very gradually getting better.

tuesday i went on a running/drinking run? a hash, if that means anything to you. it was my first time, and i think it's fair to say it's not my thing, but many of people were great. i like my beer *after* the run, and i like to run continuously. if you are starting and stopping the whole time, surely you are just amplifying the traffic lights, stop signs, and other worst parts of every road run? ... anyway. there was some running, maybe 3 miles total (or more?) and the foot felt the same as the previous several days.

i didn't run again until today, despite life events we will ignore here that were really crying out for a damn run. but no, i did other things and waited for today, when i went for about a 6 mile run. it was humid. SO HUMID. it even rained at some point, which was great because it meant the water in the air was actually doing something with itself. ... i ran slow but fairly steady. i was worried there would be foot pain but... yeah, i don't know. there was some, but not a lot, and over the run it if anything got better rather than worse. i don't know, i don't know.

anyway. i keep moving. it is 3 ish week until Hood To Coast and i am getting worried about how that's going to play out... some doubles are necessary, and i need to know that my foot isn't going to break off. also we have to move between now and then, assuming we actually get to own our house... right, so. i will focus on the fact that i got a good endorphin kick today despite insane humidity and cranky body parts, and that will be enough to keep on keepin' on.

friday night flight

that feeling where you start running, and various things hurt to various degrees, and they need some attending to, but the overall fact is that you can run, and run slightly hard, and do it for an hour and not get tired, and want to do it for an hour more.

that feeling that you are BACK!

also, the realization that it's probably because it was evening and only 17C, as opposed to like 30C and blazing sun. and as for the things that hurt, they may need a little coddling this weekend. some weird foot thing. ice and pilates, maybe swimming.

but whatever. focus on the feeling BACK! ... hood to coast is in less than a month and i'm teaching cardio kickboxing and we're moving and everything's happening. but it's going to be good! run on.