The Long Cold Run

Another view of the marathon

For the first time in several years, I spent marathon Monday on the sidelines behind my Nikon D59 taking photos of the runners. I had a good time and will admit that taking a year off was the right thing to do -- but that didn't stop me from missing being out there. I was at the finish line for the elite racers and then headed out the Cleveland circle for the rest of the day. In the end, I had about 500 photos and managed to get enough good shots to put together a set on Flickr.

On the training side of things, I am enjoying the start of training. After tomorrow's run, I will have run 18 miles this week which was right on target for the jump in mileage planned. I have an 8 mile run tomorrow and then rest on Monday (I'll be at the Red Sox game!). Tuesday brings speedwork during lunch and a 3 mile easy run with Speedy after work. The weather will hopefully allow me to bike to work and get a little skating in during the week as well. I recently switched gyms and will be heading in this week to get a tour of the new gym and start increasing my weightlifting and use the elliptical.

We hopefully will close on our new house this week so my running at this point is one of the few things helping to keep me sane! The new place is near the area where I do hill repeats so I'm looking forward to just heading out for a warm up and being right there. We will also have enough space to set up the bike trainer and weights in a permanent fashion. I am guessing this will make for a very happy family of runners.

posted by Jesse @ 7:52 PM 1 comments

Putting one foot in front of the other

Today's run was simply a process of reminding myself to put one foot in front of the other. The weather was sunny, around 45 degrees, and super windy where I was running. I hit a head very strong headwind going out and was looking forward to a good push home and then found that the wind had changed. As a result, I found myself pushing 45 pounds of running stroller and screaming toddler for 6 miles. Pushing Speedy was something like running with a parasail - good for training but not exactly what I had planned!

In the past 4 months I've torn a ligament in 1 shoulder (picking Speedy up) and dislocated the other one (sleeping) but todays run is the first that I've done pain free in several months. This was good news as I have begun the start of training for Boston's Run to Remember and Dublin in October. The Run to Remember will be slow - just a long training run. I'm really focused on spending time base building and focusing on form, speed, and strength over the next few months. Dublin's course is flat and presents a good opportunity to PR - I'd like to train to get the most out of the Dublin course.

My training also has to prepare me for 2 weeks of hiking/climbing in Morocco right after Dublin. I'll have a week off before heading into the High Atlas Mountains...then 8 hour hikes for a week! Hopefully I'll be strong enough to comfortably do the hiking so soon after completing the race.

The next few weeks are filled with training, work, and closing on our house!!!

posted by Jesse @ 5:49 PM 0 comments