Tuesday afternoon
4.13 mi / 6.65 km
41 F / 5 C
29 F / -1.6 C windchill
Once again kitchen fire business slowed me up while heading out the door. Today they removed all the cabinets, stove, oven, cupboards, and flooring. Looking forward to having a new fridge. I want the kind with the freezer on the bottom, so I can see stuff on the bottom of the fridge part.
Anyway, I wanted to run an hour, only got in four miles. The rain cleared by early afternoon, so the surfaces were dry by the time I started my run around 4:20pm. My feet still felt abraded from Saturday's run. Hard to say if it was the distance, pace, rain, or cold, or all four, but for some reason that run was pretty harsh on my soles. I still have two red spots and a few other areas where the skin is coming off a bit.
Still, it was a good run. At 9:40 mm pace, it was somewhere between aerobic and tempo pace, or perhaps my aerobic pace has dropped below 10mm now. Hard to say. I certainly didn't feel like stopping. Similar to what Laura said, my new normal is to run at least an hour, somewhere in the 6-8-mile range. Anything less feels unsatisfying.
I spent another 30-60 minutes early yesterday morning plotting new ten-mile-and-over routes. Once you get up to that distance, a lot of out-n-back possibilities open up. I noticed that I can run over to Minneapolis now. I live right on the border between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and there's a nice bike path that follows the U of M bus route that links the St. Paul campus to the Minneapolis campus, where regular traffic isn't allowed. To get on it I just have to hop over the railroad tracks a few blocks away. Once on that, I have a clear shot to the historic Stone Arch Bridge near downtown Minneapolis, thru part of the Minneapolis campus, and then over to the west side of the Mississippi River, and then back home after crossing the river again over another bridge some miles south of the Stone Arch bridge, through a neighborhood just to the south of mine. Should be fun and relatively traffic-free -- will have to check it out on Saturday.
On today's run there was a stiff wind, but it was warm enough that I could run without a hat and gloves, and could leave my silly tights at home, running with just the top layer, my sweat pants. Hopefully next week I can begin running in my shorts again. But looking out of my window this morning, I see snow on the cars in the driveway. WTF? If it snows any more, I may have to wear shoes on Thursday's run, which might be good I guess, to give my sore soles a bit of a rest before Saturday's macro run.
Anyway, by the time I got to my son's day care, at 5:10pm, my son was leaning against the window with a bunch of other toddlers, like puppies in the window of a pet shop. But unlike the old place, at this new day care all the shorties looked happy while waiting for the grandies to come pick them up. This new place is a definite improvement over the old one, but the extra driving is kind of a drag. After picking up the little guy, we went to get my daughter and played out in the schoolyard a bit before coming home to some nice ribs and Tempranillo wine.
I wish I could answer your question scedastic, but I don't usually push myself to that physical and mental state enough to be able to learn from it, or even understand the psychology.
Skedaddle, I hear ya. I don't like running fatigued. I like to run just up to that point where I'm starting to feel tired, and then stop. On the other hand, stopping well before I start to tire, like on yesterday's run, isn't much fun either.
500 to 1000 sit-ups in one setting. Wow! Now that would be brutal! You must have had a gut of steel. I have been doing some sit-ups but the number I do is NOWHERE near 500.
Yah, on top of that, all the kicks one does in karate are also equivalent to doing ab work. Still, if you're not braced for it, all the ab work is useless if someone kicks you in the gut when you're exhaling and unprepared. If I ever get back into karate, it won't be another full-contact style, that's for sure. I'm too old for that sh!t now.
I got a lecture from the wife too last night. Pretty sternly as a matter of fact. I don't feel any worse for doing it, but it doesn't mean I did the right thing. I'm just so tired of being sick and having injuries. I just wish they would have done an mri a year ago instead of all this stupid guess work. It's the guess work that gets me, they seem to think they might maybe kind of know what is going on so we'll treat it one way, only to then have to come up with a new idea of what the problem maybe kind of almost presents like. Am I just maybe too nice when I go in? Should I be demanding an mri so we can just figure this crap out once and for all?
I would. At the University of Chicago, everyone goes by Mr./Ms./Mrs., not Dr., so as not to be confused with medical doctors.
Certainly my experience with sports medicine guys hasn't been great. The first guy told me that my TOFP was a stress fracture, when in fact I had referred pain from tight shin muscles. The second guy had no idea I had an MCL spain. It took Dama to come up with the right diagnosis.