I'M BACK

I’m back, in more ways than one. Back to work after 9 days off. Man, it really sucked trying to get back into the routine this morning. The good news is that I still have 4 days of vacation that I have to use by the end of the year.

Back to blogging. It’s always been tough for me to blog from home. I guess there are too many distractions.

Back to running “high” mileage. Training since my last post has included a 10 mile progression run on Wednesday, 6 easy miles on Thanksgiving, two 7 mile runs on Friday and I closed out 80 miles for the week with a great 15 mile group run on Saturday. I wasn’t really expecting to jump from 66 to 80, but I’ll take it.

Of course, it’s “easy” to run 80 miles when I’m off from work and the weather is beautiful. Now let’s see if I can keep it going.

Yesterday I ran an easy 8 miles on the golf course near my house and an easy 5 on the treadmill in the evening. This morning was an easy 6 and I’m planning on another easy 6 this evening.

As you can see, I’ve started adding in more two-a-days. In the past I’d “worry” about when I should add doubles and whether or not singles are more important than doubles, etc. Right now I’m not going to worry about it. If I’m feeling good and have time to run a long single, I’ll do that. If not, and I still want to get in my miles, I’ll run a double – even if it means 10-11 runs a week to get 80 miles.

Best of all I’m back to running pain-free. I’ve felt really good for awhile, but have written about it because I wasn’t sure if I could believe it or not. I’ve kind of been waiting for the aches and pains to return. However, every time I start a run I think, “Dang, I feel pretty good.”

To be honest, I really wasn’t looking forward to 4 months of base building on legs that ached all the time. So I’m pretty excited to be feeling good. It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve felt like this. I was beginning to wonder if “old age” was setting in and if I just needed to get used to the aches and pains. Granted, I’ll probably screw it up by jumping from 30 to 80 mpw in 4 weeks, but as my friend Eric says, “Live and don’t learn.”

Today’s quote of the day probably applies pretty well from Halloween to New Year’s, if not year-round;

“Avoid any diet that discourages the use of hot fudge.” – Don Kardong