Running Chick

I finally made it back on track this week, (mostly) hitting my allotted miles.

Monday was 5 miles accompanied by Josh, who hasn’t done any running since ... March? He’s busy training for RAGBRAI (next week!), so I guess it’s okay.  Check out this elevation profile:

That’s 2.5 miles out & back on the S. Superior/N. Superior Roads.  I was able to make it the entire way up S. Superior Road without stopping, something I’ve been trying to do since April when we moved out here.  It’s pretty challenging, especially the last mile or so on S. Superior Road.  That portion’s in red on the chart because it’s OMG STEEP.

Wednesday was a boring 5 miler around the neighborhood. Nothing interesting to report other than the neighbor down the street is building a garage.  Thursday was a cautious 1 mile run to see how my knee did on back-to-back days. It felt a little stiff, but pretty good overall.

Saturday I did my long run of 11 miles which turned into 12 miles because I ended with 11.68 miles at the driveway. This is unacceptable! So I ran up & down the street until I got to 12 miles. My OCD alter ego felt smug afterwards.

Josh accompanied me on his bike and our route took us down Cole’s Creek Road to Old Mill Road, back to Atlantic Mine via the snowmobile trail, then back home.  The snowmobile trail has seen a lot of ATV traffic, the surface was churned up to the consistency of beach sand. I’m pretty certain quads had flames shooting out of them at several points during that stretch and Josh hit a particularly soft section that had him proclaiming that he needed a fat bike.  Not until you sell one of of your other five bikes, Mister. 

The weather was much more cooperative compared to last Saturday. Temps in the low-mid 70s, overcast and a little breezy.  We got rained on a couple of times, but nothing lasting longer than 10 minutes.

Weekly recap:  Monday 5 @ 10:57, Wednesday 5 @ 10:27, Thursday 1 @ 10:07 and Saturday 12 @ 11:03 for a total of 23 miles.  Plus one 13 mile mountain bike ride with Josh thrown in on Thursday.  Next week I have 26 miles on the schedule, my long run will be the Canal Run half marathon, which I’ll be running with this dude.

Behold my sexsay orange socks.  I’ve been having some lower leg achiness after my long runs, so I decided to wear my ProCompression socks and see if they helped.  I usually wear them around the house after my long runs because, well, they’re a little goofy looking, but I already look like a doofus when I’m running, so why not go full on?  Not only were they comfortable during my run, I didn’t have any soreness or aching legs/ankles at all during the rest of the day or Sunday morning.  Hm, there might be something to this compression stuff.  Time to go shopping for more colors.