Archive for July 7th, 2009

Life is looking up – I had a great night of sleep.  The noisy cardinal disappeared almost a week ago (maybe a neighbor took a BB gun to it) but instead of peace and quiet returning, the house next door is in the midst of a complete renovation, so yesterday I was out on my deck at 7:30 am, yelling at the workers for using a nail gun so early in the !@#$ morning.  I scared the guys pretty good, crazy bed-hair and all, so they stopped for about an hour and this morning they waited till a more reasonable 8am.

On the running front, things are going great.  The IT band is (dare I say it?) normal again, though I feel it’s one of those injuries that once you have it, you’re always open to reinjury, so I take it with a grain of salt.  It ended up lasting 6 weeks exactly, but now that I know what to do about it if it returns, I don’t foresee it being so drawn-out again.

Last week was a nice, fat, undramatic 61 mile week and boy, did that make me happy.  Pacing was slower than usual because it kept being mid-80s by the time I got out and with all that had been going on, I was satisfied to plod through most of them, so my runs averaged 8:51 to 8:08, depending on the day.

Continuing the trend, yesterday was a 7-mile recoveryish run at 8:53 (87 degrees) and today’s 9 averaged 8:24.  I’m just running by feel – haven’t worn my HR monitor in weeks, either.

Here’s what my tentative calendar looks like for the rest of the month.  I’ll probably get a day off in there somewhere, just not sure when.

Except for progression runs starting the 19th, I haven’t marked any quality runs in yet, choosing  to play it by ear since I’m not training yet.  I figure I’ll start with a short tempo this week, then alternate intervals and tempos till August.  I’m still feeling very much in “taking it easy” mode after being in running rehab the last few weeks.  Funny how easy it is to get out of the quality work habit once you’ve let it lapse.

One interesting note is that if I started Hudson at the 20-week mark (instead of doing my own base-building this month), marathon training would have begun this week.  As it is, I have no interest in calling anything “marathon training” 20-weeks out, so I’m ignoring the little numbers to the left of the calendar until August.  Nod to Hudson for the progression runs, though.

Besides that, I’ve been quite industrious these last few days, adding 10 new designs to The Gifted Runner, so check it out if you’re curious.  But ladies, don’t ask me why the pink wicking shirts are showing up as white, I’ve got a tech support email out to Zazzle to fix it.  It’s not my fault, I swear.