Shh, I didn't skip any runs you're making that up.

Alright well I finally got back to a normal schedule today.  Well actually yesterday but it's carried over which is nice.  So this morning I got up at 6am, started stretching and drinking water to go out for a morning run, something I've only done once since starting to run again. Morning runs were always something I had a hard time adjusting to, anytime I had gotten away from them getting back was a struggle.

As I stepped outside this morning I realized it was a lot colder than I was expecting which surprised me since I sleep with a window open in my room and I was not particularly cold getting up.  I soon discovered it was more the wind than anything else that made it cold.  The assault the wind had on my face at first was very unpleasant but thats what comes with running in the winter in New England.  I don't really mind it that much after all it is only noticeable at least to me for the first few minutes of a run unless it's below 0.

I got about 4 miles in today in just over 31 minutes, slow but considering how I felt and it being my first run in a while I suppose it will do.  I am kinda tempted to do another 3 and change later today but I can't decide if that is a bad idea or not so only time will tell.  I've gotta get back on track though starting Friday I need to make sure I get on pace to hit the 2,010 miles for the year and make Sweetland eat some donuts.

What I would give for a full nights sleep.

I'm not sure how long this has been going on but I think it's been the past 5 nights I have not been able to get more than 2 hours of sleep.  Now as bad as 2 hours of sleep is in one night, you'd think it'd be easy to fall asleep the following night, well it's not when you end up falling asleep at 8pm then waking up an hour later feeling completely refreshed.  I should have written this first but there is a good chance of this post not making any sense.  Anyway moving on.  So I slept an hour this morning between 9 and 10 after being up all night.  I was going to avoid it but I figured it was only an hour before jesus(aka my dad) came in to make sure I was awake for church.  There is no chance he'd let me miss church if it was my first time getting sleep in 5 weeks he'd still make sure i woke up for church.  He's already proven church comes before any health concerns of mine when I woke up one morning to find a tick burrowed into my skin and he wanted me to wait till after church to take care of it and tried to rush me out of the house.   And he wonders why I don't respect his beliefs!  So now that that is over with the only concern I really have is making sure I stay awake till at least 10pm tonight because despite the lack of sleep I've had over the past few days I will most likely not sleep through the night if I do sleep before 10.   Christmas eve I was tired and went to bed at 11pm, woke up 2 hours later only to be up the rest of the night/day.

Anyway I think I've only managed to run twice over this span and neither time was more than 4 miles so it's been a waste of a week.  I just need to find a friend to keep me occupied till 9 or 10 tonight so I don't fall asleep during the day today then maybe I can finally get back onto a normal schedule tomorrow.  My go to person to hang out Pete isn't around.

A messy weekend.

Well this weekend didn't go at all as planned.  Me writing this at 4am should be the first sign of that considering I haven't slept yet.  This is how the entire weekend went really.  Last night it was some time after 5am when I went to sleep, to get up a little after 9.

Moving on.  So my plan for the weekend was 8 miles Friday, 4 on Saturday and 10 on Sunday.  Of course that isn't how it went at all, but the good news is it was still a solid weekend of training.  Well it was good in my opinion for where I am at.  I got in just over 8 miles Friday night which I had mention in a previous post, Saturday I felt pretty good which was encouraging, instead of the 4 mile run I planned on I got talked into doing 7 with Jim Johnson.  My thought process on it was with 8 to 12 inches of snow expected for Sunday it was not only going to make running tougher because I would unlikely be able to run on any clear pavement.  I figured if I'm going to do the longest run since I've started training again I should probably try to get it done in favorable conditions.  I decided that back to back "long" runs of 8 and 7 were a pretty good substitute for missing a 10 miler with rest.  The 7 miles was pretty good and I actually ran much faster than I thought.  It turned out to be just over 7:30 pace.  It obviously helped quite a bit to run it with Jim I'm sure I would have been close to 8 minute miles had I run it alone.

So that was Saturday, now on Sunday I spent the morning shoveling then was starving so I sat and had breakfast while I watched NFL pregame shows.  While I watched football I decided I'd do my run "later" with no specific time in mind or where I'd run.  Finally 9pm rolled around and I started to get ready.  I decided it was late enough to just go out on the back roads around my house.  Conditions weren't too bad but it helped quite a bit that there weren't many cars on the road.  I didn't measure out the run and i don't think I will.  I ran for 32:29 and I'm going to call it 4 miles. The first 2 miles of the run my legs felt like trash, it was a real struggle just to get going.  At one point I thought they were finally loosening up as I went down a hill but as it flattened out I realized they were still junk.  Maybe 5 minutes or so after that I finally started to feel better, better but not good.  Fitness wise I could have kept going but with how my legs felt I didn't want to  push things, they are a little beat up as it is and I certainly don't want to add an injury into the mix. I will continue to push myself as much as my body feels comfortable.  I am taking tomorrow...well today off which will be much needed rest.  I would still like to be able to get in a 12 mile run within the next two weeks but we will see, I can't get too greedy.

Half(twice) the man I used to be

Well I got my 8 miles in tonight, it was dark and cold.  So cold in fact I had to stop to use one of my gloves for something other than my hand.  I felt like complete garbage for the first two miles or so which had me a bit nervous but luckily that went away.  I was feeling pretty good for most of the run, the only time i really was nervous about anything was there is one spot before the 5th mile mark that there was no sidewalk on the main road so i had to dodge some cars there and kept going.  I started getting tired around mile 6 or so which is about what I was expecting that is about my limit for runs being comfortable.  Hopefully this weekend can help that some if I can get the 10 in on sunday or at least 8,  it will all depend on how my legs feel then.

I mixed it up a bit with the Ipod tonight though, it was only about half STP.

Interstate Love Song

I took yesterday off as I said I was going to, it's definitely something I need to make sure I continue to do regularly until I get back in shape(lose a few lbs etc...)  I hate it though, not that I am a hardcore runner by any means all of a sudden but I feel lazier on days off during the week,  I was home with not much to do running would have fit in perfectly but no.

Anyway I meant to write during my last entry that for that entire run I listened to Stone Temple Pilots.  I've been listening to them a lot lately which was all triggered by downloading a video of their MTV unplugged session that is incredible.  Most of their stuff is great for running though not to mention Interstate Love Song is probably in my top 10 best songs ever.  So if for some reason you haven't been listening to them you should start.

ANKLE UPDATE:
Yea the capital letters are completely unnecessary but what are you going to do about it?   Nothing.  I still have some significant pain in my ankle even though it was a week ago today that I rolled it 200 times.  Running I don't notice, mostly it's going up and down stairs and just generally the entire morning it's stiffer than normal. It's not really an issue running or walking around but it doesn't seem to have gotten any better the last few days.  I am only concerned that it will stay weak and will roll again a lot easier than normal which during the winter months is never a good thing especially because I think it's going to snow again tomorrow.

I will write another entry later on after my run.   We will see if I can make it 8 miles.

Captain Zapp Brannigan: In the game of chess you can never let your adversary see your pieces.

The title of this entry is a quote from a real genius of our time. Captain Zapp Brannigan.  If you're not familiar he's a character on the cartoon show Futurama.  I haven't really seen the show THAT much, I have no idea when it normally airs just catch repeats now and then.  Still though he might be one of the most quotable characters in all of television.

Today I decided to take it easy for a few reasons.  I am going to take tomorrow off, then for Friday, Saturday and Sunday I am hoping to aim at doing 7-8, 4, 10.  We will see, it's all going to go on how I feel as I go. I'm doing my best not to over do it but at the same time I want to get back to doing at least 60 miles a week as soon as I can.  Once I am there I can start to get faster and get my average pace back down to a reasonable 7 minutes per mile or less instead of the jogging I am currently doing.

Once I am in a better groove of getting my runs in regularly I will have to start adding in workouts and doing drills.  I need to get back to adding in plyos to my runs that I was doing earlier in the fall.  I am encouraged at my run tonight though and I think maybe by the second week of January I might aim to hop in one of the Wakefield Lake 5k races on a Wednesday night just to see where I am at and mix things up a bit.

I am in a great mood tonight though and eagerly looking forward to what is ahead of me.  I'll end this entry the same way I started another Zapp Brannigan quote.

Captain Zapp Brannigan: Kif, I'm sensing a very sensual disturbance in the force. Prepare for ship-to-ship intimacy. 

David Caruso: Worlds Greatest Actor

So I have never seen the TV show CSI Miami but I've seen lots of clips from it.  The only thing I can gather from the clips is that David Caruso is the worst actor on the planet.  Now this isn't news to anyone at all because if you have ever seen him you know he's terrible.  I bring this up because this weekend I recently saw this again and Jim Carrey making fun of him is pretty funny.


On to more important things though.  My ankle feels a lot better today, there is still some pain but no limping so I went back out for a run.  I didn't feel any pain in my knee or ankle today on my run but as I ran today though I felt fatigue in my lower leg, almost as if the muscles or tendons were tired from healing but it did not affect my run much.  I started off pretty slow which is something I definitely need to do more often, as I loosened up and got into a rhythm I felt a lot better as I went and picked up the pace.  I ran about 6.5 miles and that took me 49:46 so not too bad I think that comes out to 7:40 pace, the first mile or two was probably around 8 minutes so not bad.

I felt pretty good after today though, even though it was a slow run it felt kinda fast.  Just getting the taste of feeling like I am running fast is good for motivation.  It will be a whole lot nicer when I can hit 6 minute pace on a run and actually be going fast instead of just part of my illusion.  Anyway today was a good run and I'm looking to do a longer run tomorrow at a more relaxed pace so we'll see.

Crippled

Well, instead of my ankle feeling better this morning it feels a whole lot worse.  I hobbled downstairs to pee when I woke up going one step at a time.  It is possible it just  needs to loosen up or something but I am guessing I am going to miss a run today which is no good considering the rest of this week already is a mess. What can you do though?  These are the problems I will have when I run in Burlington, none of the sidewalks are ever really clear once it starts snowing so if I want to run somewhere and not worry about rolling my ankle I have to go to another town.

Twenty Six

So in honor of Michelle's birthday and my own knee pain and laziness I ran tonight for 26 minutes...exactly.  I'm not going to measure it out, I'm sure it's over 3 miles but I'm only counting it as 3.  It would have been a little over except at the end of my run, going up a hill from a park(that closes at dusk) I had to dodge a car coming down the hill apparently not paying attention to anything that might be in the road to go park in an empty parking lot. I jumped to the right to get out of the way and proceeded to roll my ankle, for the second time of the run.  This time was worse than the first and I was just too annoyed to continue the run more than a few steps after.  I hit stop on my watch and looked down to see 26:00.99  not bad.  Anyway  thats it I'm not going to write anything else here.

Well other than another Happy Birthday to Michelle.


Update: I rolled my ankle AGAIN walking into Pete's this time being worse than the previous two

I forgot my password thats why I didn't blog the last 2 days.

Is there any chance you actually believe the title of this?  If you do then we're better friends already, the truth however is not that I forgot to blog or lost my password the truth is I got lazy.

Anyway despite the time off and new shoes I still have some knee pain, and since I already ruined this week I've decided to take it easy for the week(I don't expect that to last) to try to help it heal some more.  I did a real easy 3.4 mile run, it was pretty windy but I felt relaxed most of the run once I got loosened up a bit.  I finished in 26:13 which is alright.

 I've still got a long way to go before I can actually start enjoying my runs but I'm still pretty hopeful even after the last two days.  Thinking about being able to run 8 or 10 mile runs at 6 minute per mile pace is a good thing.  Is it strange that I don't enjoy runs unless it's at least 8 miles?  Maybe I just associate those runs with the trails of the Dracut State forest I enjoy so much.  Either way it's only something that real runners understand and the casual jogger cannot.  The jogger can get enjoyment from running sure, it always feels good to have a good run of any distance but there is something different about hammering through a run of 8 or more miles being able to talk the whole time to finish and recover almost immediately.  That is what I am aiming for.