THE LATTER

It’s been a few days since my last post and I’m happy to say my hip is feeling “normal.” My last 2-3 “injuries” I’ve been able to get in and see Jenna right away and bounce back with only a day or two off. Either I’m a super fast healer or she knows what she’s doing. Given that I’m 38 years old, I’m betting on the latter. Of course, I can’t be going to her office every time there’s an ache or pain – there has to be some kind of self monitoring in-place along the way to know the difference between an ache and a potential injury.

I saw Jenna on Friday morning and that afternoon I ran 5 miles from work to test things out. Before heading out the door, a bunch of my co-workers were telling me how cold it was outside. Here’s my advice, if you don’t run in the cold, don’t tell those of us that do, how cold it is. Seriously, it was 17 degrees above – within 10 minutes I was trying to cool down because I overdressed after listening to everyone.

That run ended my month of November with 302 miles. My previous high for November was 290 miles from last year. Maybe even more impressive is that I did this on 28 runs (3 days off and 1 double). I’ve never averaged more than 10 miles per run for that length of time. I’ve run more miles in a month, but that has required 35-40 runs.

Saturday I had a nice group run which followed the same route as the previous Saturday; Fort Snelling and Pike Island. Best of all we (mostly) finished before getting about 6 inches of new snow. This run gave me 70 miles for the week on 7 runs.

While I like the snow, it usually throws a wrench into the running plans for a day or two as I wait for sidewalks and paths to get plowed. Rather than stumble around yesterday, I jumped on the treadmill for 8 miles during the Viking’s game. This morning I just ran multiple laps around Normandale Lake for 8 miles, but I did include some 30 second strides. Usually I don’t do them once the snow falls, but this year I’m going to try to do them once a week.

Finally, here’s my latest interview - this one of Minnesota legend, Barney Klecker. And speaking of interviewees, congrats to Nicole (2:42) and Marie Sample (2:46) for their races at the Cal International Marathon where they punched their tickets to Boston in April for the Olympic Marathon Trials. By the way, Nicole’s time was about a 10-minute PR. Congrats also go out to Jim and Kelly for running 1:14 and 1:21, respectively, at the Tucson Half Marathon. I believe that’s a PR for Jim.

Quote of the day;

“I kind of draw the line at 2:20. If they didn’t run faster than that, I didn’t think they were really a serious marathoner. They certainly weren’t someone I’d fear in a race.” - Barney Klecker