Sunday: two miles run-commute
Sunday afternoon: “Front ST” -- Chest & Bi’s. Good pump.
Monday: two miles run-commute. Starting to pick up the pace a bit on these daily mini runs. Legs chomping at the bit for a longer run.
Monday afternoon: “Bottom ST” – Hips, Glutes & Legs. Good pump.
I seem to be solidifying the maxes on my bench presses, deadlifts and squats; they're getting more reliable and easier. Almost strained my knee on the deadlift though. I lost concentration and lifted with poor form. Felt it some on Tuesday's run.
I then extended the workout, à la HSB, by helping our carpenter lift a second story window into place. Just then a pretty young thing ran by, overstriding a bit, but with a nice relaxed form. Forty minutes later, while heading out to pick up my son at daycare, I saw her out on Larpenteur Avenue, running alongside the U’s experimental fields, coming back towards our neighborhood. This section of Larpenteur is a staple of my eastern routes too. “Wow,” I thought, “she’s been running a long time.” Then I thought, “wait a minute, that’s just a normal mezzo run.” Kind of like catching yourself in a window's reflection before you realize who you are, I got a somewhat objective sense of this amazing thing we do called
running.
Tuesday morning: 1-mile run commute, some stretching, incline sit-ups, and mobility exercises with ankle weights in my office, then
Tuesday afternoon, 11.5-mile run home along both banks of the Mississippi River.
(Final section into my neighborhood not shown)
It had been 10 days since my last macro run, and five days since my last mezzo run. It felt like forever. As Dama Beija-flor says, these longer runs can be addicting, although there’s usually some point around the 3/4–mark where I try to wish into existence a shower-shaped saucer that could come wisk me away, returning me home with enough time in-flight to clean up and towel off.
That was the case yesterday, my legs felt pretty heavy for the last few miles. I don't think it works for me to go more than two days without a proper mezzo or macro run--the legs stiffen up. Still, overall it was a pretty solid outing. Beautiful weather and 77F temps. This route is neat because it has so many different surface types and there's about 1000 feet in elevation gain/loss. Don't laugh mountain trail runners, that's unusual for an urban route in the Twin Cities. Another attractive feature of this route is all the attractive UofM female track/cross-country runners who populate it at the end of the afternoon. One speedy one in particular gave me the biggest shit-eating grin I've yet encountered.
I ran down close to the bank for the final river section, coming down off the bluff. It's pretty cool down there. The path was strewn with autumn tree-debris and often covered by a colorful canopy. I should have brought my camera. One section is actually a bridge that parallels the bank where there isn't enough purchase to construct a path on the bank itself:
I hit a lot of rocks down there, hidden under the fallen leaves, but the worst was on a sidewalk coming back towards my neighborhood, on University Avenue. A sharp rock near the construction of a light-rail station had lodged in the crack between sidewalk sections, and got me right under the mets. Ouch! It stopped me dead in my tracks. First one of those in quite a while. I had thought I had built up callused immunity to such bruising. It took a good 30 seconds to shake off the pain, but after a few blocks it was mostly gone, and what was left of it turned into masochistic pleasure.