Fun Runs and Floating

Welcome everyone ! This week (May 13 - 19, 2012) was a nice one overall, with some fun and interesting happenings. I had a nice 12 mile "short" long run on Sunday to start off the week. I did a few courses during the week for my morning runs that I don't normally do (I usually stay pretty much inside my neighborhood since its usually dark out).

I have noticed a bit of soreness / stiffness in my knees on a few of the runs, so I inserted some rest days / cross-training to mix it up. I can't tell if it is just a natural adjustment to the increase in miles I've been putting in over the last several weeks, or if it is something else entirely, but I'm trying to err on the side of being conservative and giving myself time to recover. I love being out and about so much, I really have to "work" at the days when I choose to do nothing at all, reminding myself that rest is an active part of the plan.

Saturday morning there was a Fun Run / 5K at my son's school, and the entire family signed up to run. Aiden and I ran the Fun Run, which was supposed to be a mile and wound up being about 0.83 miles (close enough). It was Aiden's first road race (he turned six in October), so he was excited to do it. He is pretty used to hearing me talk about running (and Mom too), so he was pretty convinced that he too could run several miles with no problem. Well, at least he started with confidence. ;-) We did a sort of run a while / walk a while for the run, and I'm pretty sure he had an fun time. My wife ran the 5K afterwards, and even though it was a bit on the warm side, she still placed 4th in her age group, so she was pretty happy about that. All in all, it was a fun morning.

The little toe that I sliced open last Wednesday is certainly proving to be stubborn as far as healing over is concerned. Given the location of the wound, it gets aggravated by the runs I suppose. It still stings a good bit at the beginning of most runs (and at the end of some)...I'm REALLY looking forward to that healing over !

I did have one of those surreal running moments on Friday morning that was sort of cool. While I was running along a particularly dark part, I started to notice that moving along seemed to be taking almost no effort at all....except I didn't actually seem to be moving along the road. For all the world it felt like I was moving my body, but just floating in one place. Sort of spacey, but at least it made the otherwise pleasant but uneventful morning run something a bit interesting.

Here is what last week looked like...

Day	Activity	Distance (in miles)	Avg. Heart Rate	Max Heart Rate
Sunday	Running	12.39	139	153
Monday	Rest	----	---	---
Tuesday	Running	6.51	149	165
Wednesday	Walking	4.26	---	---
Thursday	Running	6.27	144	156
Friday	Running	6.56	141	156
Saturday	Cycling	20.58	120	146
	Running	0.83	---	---

 These are my time and distance totals for the week:

Activity	Time Total	Distance Total (in miles)
Running	4:47:04	32.56
Walking	0:59:10	4.26
Cycling	1:18:45	20.58
--------------	--------------	--------------
Overall Total	7:04:59	57:40

Day	Activity	Sets	Reps	Recovery Interval
Sunday	Rest Day	---	---	---
Monday	Rest Day	---	---	---
Tuesday	Pullups	6	8	3:00
Wednesday	Dips	7	10	2:30
Thursday	Dips	4	10	2:00
Friday	Rest Day	----	---	---
Saturday	Pullups / Dips Alternating	5 / 5	5 / 10	2:00

I continued to mix up the sets and reps for the pullups and dips this week, and added a bit of abdominal work, although I'll need to step that up quite a bit. In the coming week I'm going to start working pushups back into the mix.

Happy Running Everyone !!!