Week of January 4, 2009

Seems strange to type "2009".

Sunday: I wanted to get at least 10 in. I went south on Substation, into the strong wind. Turned east on Hamilton for another mile before turning back and heading home for 10. 9 minute pace going out, a bit faster coming back, but the last one was tough. It was tough because I was hurting once again. Very discouraging. It's gonna take more time.

Tuesday: The High School is always a decent place to run to. The traffic isn't bad until school's about to start. What to do after that? I can go south, north, or just back home. I wound up doing loops around the school. It's about 3/4 mile, and an extra 1/4 can be tacked on. I was scouting out a possible course for the 24-hour run, and it seemed pretty good. My running wasn't too bad either. Still slow: 9-minute pace. But at least it was steady for these 10 miles.

Wednesday: This was a frustrating day. There was freezing rain, so I hit the mill. Wanted to do 10 or more, and wanted something of substance. I did manage 3 x 1200 at 6:40 pace, but that was it. Only wound up with 6 miles total. The other frustrating thing was that I broke the mill for the first time in about 2 years. Now I'll take it apart, but I'll probably need to call for a repair person.

Thusday: Well, today makes three days of running in a row. Pretty decent. I'm still feeling about the same, which is better than a week or two ago, but no better than the last few days. There was about 3 inches of new snow on the ground, and I hit the trails in back of, and to the side of our subdivision. I also went across Laurel and ran on the all-purpose trails through the Laurel Glen subdivision, something I've never done before. This trudging was really slow. I'll say it was 8 miles at 10-minute pace, but even that's probably optimistic.

Other happenings:
-Still working on the 24-hour thing. Lots of excitement about it. Edgewater sounds good for a location at this point.
-Work has been slow. I've spent some amount of time in the store lately, but that's been *really* slow. I do expect to become more busy with my day job soon.
-Another day-job note: I passed my latest cfps (certification exam), so I'm good for another 3 years.
-Got a new scale. It measures heavier than the last one by 2 or more pounds. So now I'm 165! The worst news of all? This is probably accurate. Got a long way to go.

Friday: Drove to Buckeye Woods park to run in order to check it as a possible site for the 24-hour run. It's not suitable; one trail is too short, has small hills and sharp turns. The other (the longer, nice shady one) is dirt and has some hills as well. But I did have a really nice short run on top of the snow. A bit better than 9-minute pace - not bad for the conditions.

Saturday: We got pounded with snow, so there was no driving to run either on the towpath or with the MCRR folks. I did the mill thing for 10, and then snowblowed, and then actually ran in the deep snow for 2 more slow miles. I'll probably do something like this tomorrow too.

That makes 48 slow miles for the week. Not much for me, but more than the last few. I'm still feeling a bit better, but still far from 100%. At this point, running doesn't seem to make things worse, even though it did a few weeks ago. Not sure how much the Drs. Joe and Lisa helped; I had been improving anyway. For now I'll stop seeing them - got the Florida and London trip coming up - and see how things progress.