EXERCISING

Someone actually left a comment recently asking if I were alive and running. The answers are ‘yes’ and ‘technically, yes’.


Yes, I’m still alive – as you can tell by me actually updating my blog.

Technically, I am still running. I had 14 miles in September. It took 4 runs to get in the kind of mileage, but I managed.

Since my last post was 2 months ago, I suppose I should back up a little. After that post I ran 15K race, where my time was close to my marathon pace – not because I was doing a MP workout, but because I’d lost so much fitness with my achy knee. The following weekend I ran the Ragnar Relay. I had a blast and our team came in 4th. The following week I ran a 20 miler because I still had TCM on the brain. Even though I was running, I couldn’t get consistent and my mileage bounced around between 25 and 45 miles. And motivation was seriously lacking.

At the start of September I realized that I didn’t want to run TCM just to finish and that I’d lost too much fitness to do anything other than try to finish. Plus, my knee still wasn’t 100% and I didn’t want to run TCM which would delay my recovery even further.

In the process I’ve discovered a new term for cross-training. It’s called exercising. I’ve just been exercising; biking, elliptical, spin class, walking the dog, roller skiing, etc. I’ve only recently added in runs of 2-3 miles and that’s been mainly to test my knee. It actually feels better when I run, but it still aches afterwards. Biking seems to be the best exercise for my knee. Of course, that makes sense given the lack of pounding.

In the meantime, I’ve been busy coaching the 3rd – 6th grade youth cross country program. We had 50 kids out for the team, including my youngest daughter. It was another great season and we’re already looking at ways to improve it for next year.

There you have it, that’s what I’ve been up to in the last 2 months.