Cautious...

Last Wednesday, 8.8 miles in 1:05:38
Last Thursday, ?? in :06
This Wednesday, 3.3 miles in :26

I easily lowered my time on my 8.8 mile loop last Wednesday, but paid for it on Thursday. As soon as I started my run, I felt a pain in the top of my left knee. As I hit Dwight and Shattuck, I realized that it was getting worse, not going away, so I called it and headed home. After five days of stretching, icing, ibuprofin, and no running, I decided that I was ready to try again this morning.

I stepped outside this morning and was greeted by the smell of woodsmoke. The summer wildfire season is officially underway, with fires to the north, south, and east. Although there is visible smoke in the air here, I'm assured that the air quality on this side of the hills is fine. The run itself was uneventful, an easy loop accompanied by Tom Waits. No pain, so I'll take some ibuprofin to keep any swelling down, and push it a little more tomorrow.

Squeezing one in

Thursday pm, 4 miles in :31

I missed my ride to yesterday's trail run (haha, funny story involving streets with similar names and my being too cool to ask for directions) but I got a 5 mile bike ride around Rockridge out of it.

Today I finished up at work early enough to squeeze in 4 miles before I leave for the airport. I'm heading to Atlanta for a few days, where I'll remind myself why I was never in shape at the beginning of cross country season.

Monday, ouch
Tuesday, 5.8 miles in :48

I'm still wicked stiff from Sunday's adventure. I didn't bother going out Monday, and this morning was a ginger 5.8 miles. I'm sleeping in tomorrow morning in preparation for an afternoon trail run; we'll see how I feel.

Weekend Warrior II

Friday pm, 5 pints
Saturday am, 8.8 miles, 1:07
Sunday am, softball practice, 2 hours
Sunday pm, 12.4 miles, 1:33

Christine and Si are out of town, so I'm working pretty hard to fill my time. The Friday work run was replaced by an after-work birthday celebration. Somehow, this led to a 7 am run on Saturday that went much better than it should have, by all rights. In fact, 1:07:09 is my new fastest time for my 8.8 mile loop. This morning was a long softball practice (I know that lots of baseball players are fat, but this was harder work than I remembered!), so I decided to pare back my planned 14 miler to 10 miles and to move it from the hills to the flat Ohlone Greenway. I got off to a strong start, though, and ended up running to the end of the Greenway. The way back was a bit of a drag, and I actually got some wicked cramps while stretching afterward - this has never happened to me, but I downed some salty Gatorade and some raisins, which seemed to help. No bananas in the house for once!

I'll do some extra stretching tonight, and go for an easy morning tomorrow.

Hola amigos...

I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but things have been pretty crazy around here. Well, not that crazy, but I got out of the habit of posting. For the record, the Broad St run went down in 66:12, not a bad time but not a great one. The race was fun, and it was good to see some old friends. My only mistake was running back up to Carpenter St with Dierdre afterwards, for an extra 3 miles or so.

Since then I have ranged between 16-33 miles a week. Traveling to the east coast messed with Silas's clock, which messed with my morning runs. I started a Friday run at work with 4 other folks, but we very quickly dwindled to 2. We'll see what happens with that. Also, significantly, I got two good runs with Silas last weekend, including the ever-elusive 10+ mile nap/run. Si hadn't been running with me in nearly a month, and we both enjoyed the time out together.

Tonight I squeezed in a 3 miler in 23 minutes. Enough to say hello to my legs, but not enough to spoil tomorrow's (potential) run.