Wow, it’s been a while
Yeesh, I knew I was a bad blogger, but this is ridiculous. So, it’s been over a month since my last post and I really don’t have a whole lot to say.
I missed the half marathon update, so I guess I should start there. I ran it in one hour and thirty seven minutes, though the last 5K was a real struggle. I think it was a combination of going out a little too fast and completely forgetting that the last 6 miles of the course were mostly uphill. I’d looked at the elevation profile before hand, but I guess it didn’t really sink in. I like to think I’ll give it another shot next year and maybe run it a little quicker. For only having been running for three months, I guess that’s a reasonable time but it bugs me and I know I can do it better.
After the half, I forced myself to take it easy for a week or so then started rolling into my next training program and ran a 5K. The 5K went ok, it was packed, and I ran it in about 20 minutes, which is a far cry from the 18 minute 5Ks of yesteryear, but I’ll take it. The week after that I continued my training for the 11.5 mile trail run in February and all seemed to be going well until the weekend when my knee started to hurt a bit.
I ran through it a little on Monday and Tuesday of last week but it continued to nag, so I took an unplanned break over Christmas Eve/Christmas and then went for a 6 mile run on Friday. Then, I took the weekend off and am planning to give it a go again this week. All of that is a long way of saying that my mileage has been down more than I’d planned in December, and I really hope that’s not going to be a barrier to finishing the 11.5 mile trail run I have scheduled for February.
Assuming I manage to get through that, I’m planning on backing off on the longish-distance stuff and refocus on mostly high intensity, short cardio and strength training for a while just to change things up on my body a bit and trim these last 10 pounds off. My theory is that if I keep one long run per week in my regimen I will hopefully be able to hop in to whatever races pop up.
Oh well, we’ll see. I hope my knee holds up this week. It’s weird. Running straight I’m all good, it’s more side-to-side lateral movements that are causing issues.