Running Chick

Here, have a beer or two on me.

We need to celebrate, y’all because I ran 19 miles this week 100% pain free.  Granted, my calves are so tight that I could barely manage more than a shuffle getting out of bed this morning after yesterday’s long run, and my insoles gave me blisters the size of dimes (remember this?) but no shin pain. The last time I ran that many weekly miles was back in April 2009, but those miles sure weren’t pain free.

Laugh away, but those miles came mostly by accident. I’ve been hovering around 10-13/week and didn’t have any intentions of doing anything different. I churned out four on the treadmill on Tuesday as normal. My friend Liz, who is in town vacationing, gave me a call and asked me to run with her.  So I ended up doing three on the treadmill and 3.1 miles with her (her farthest run ever!)  for a total of six on Thursday.

Knowing that I was already sitting on 10 miles for the week and not wanting to go much higher, I only intended to do four or five on Saturday. Liz wanted to run again, so I figured I’d run to the Nara trail, run two with her and then catch a ride back home with her. But then when I left in the morning, it was nice & cool outside, I had lots of energy and just felt like running longer. So I ran the 3.25 miles to the trail, ran 2 with Liz and then ran 4 back to my house. That’s 9.25 miles for Saturday and a grand total of 19.41 for the week.

When I offloaded the stats for the week from my GPS, I thought it was a mistake. Then I wished I would have paid more attention to my mileage before I left on Saturday because I would have gone an extra .6 to make it an even 20 miles. What can I say, I like nice even numbers.

Funny thing is that on Tuesday I sent an update email to my PT and asked her if she had any mileage limitations she wanted me to stick with. I haven’t heard back from her yet, but when I do, I hope she tells me no because I have a feeling she might have some stern words for me when I tell her what I did. Oops.

I had my first hot run of the season today, and it completely kicked my tail.  You think I’d learn how to manage the heat after many summers of running in it, but I guess I’m just a slow learner.

I woke up at 7:30, thought about going running, and promptly rolled over for another hour of sleep. When I did finally climb out of bed, I put my running clothes on and proceeded to get sucked into “Parking Wars” for the next hour. Or two. By the time I ate and got rest of my running stuff together, it was pushing 11:30 and already over 70 degrees and sunny. Uh oh. The first mile wasn’t too bad because it was in the shade, but the next five were full-on sun with no breeze at all. I didn’t make it any easier on myself by only taking one flask of water, because by the second mile I was already in water conservation mode and only taking small sips here & there. That’s not enough to stay hydrated, for certain, and I was thirsty for the majority of the run.  I took quite a few walk breaks and slowed down considerably and alternatively felt like jumping into or drinking the canal when I was done, but the good news is that those six miles were completely pain free.

I’m still doing two days on the treadmill and one day outside. I’ve slowly bumped up to 3.5-4.0 miles on the treadmill (yuck) and one longer run on the weekend. This week’s mileage was 13.50, which is the most I’ve run since mid-March, and thanks to good old 174, probably the only completely pain-free week of that amount of miles in something like two years. Could even be more, I’m not entirely sure. I’m not planning on taking my weekly mileage too much higher because I’m not training for any races (not allowed to race this year) and I have a ton of house selling work to do so I want to keep my free time as free as possible.

Anyhoo, the weekend we were in Madison for my appointment at the UW Health Runner’s Clinic, we hit up the Madison Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning before heading out of town. It was held right downtown on capital square and it was humongous. Unfortunately, there was so many people around that I didn’t have many good opportunities to snap pictures. I did get a few, however.

Sunflowers were big item at the stands.

In addition to radishes, rhubarb and asparagus were on almost every vendor’s table.

Sea of people.

And finally, a glamour shot of the kitty. Notice the disinterested, vacant yet sexy look? We have some serious modeling potential here, people. Supermodel quality for sure. I should get her an agent like Ice-T and Coco did for their dog.

Next up on the home improvement front: Josh and I attempt to hang wallpaper. Together. Will we both survive?

Ever wonder what my treadmill stride sessions consist of? Well now you can! The stride-free music starts and then the stride clip starts.

This week was 3ish treadmill miles on Tuesday and Thursday and then 3.5 today outside along the waterfront and in downtown Houghton. It can get pretty mundane on the treadmill and I’ve decided to keep my max at 3.5 miles just for sanity purposes.  It was really nice to get outside and run some hills.  Things have been going well, overall. My shin pain comes and goes, but I usually only notice it when I drop my pace below 10:00. I sent an update email to my PT lady and asked her if I should be picking up my stride rate if I run faster, and she told me that I should not be going any faster than 10:00 for the time being or I might have a flare-up.  Oopsie.

Other than that, the big news in my world is that I’ve decided to sell my house and buy something bigger outside of the city limits.  Josh and I have been looking at various places over the past two weeks, but nothing really tempting has come along yet. We looked at about 10 houses today, some were icky, some were really icky, and some were nice enough to schedule a visit with the relator.  It’s a good thing I’m not doing any serious training this summer, because between house hunting and doing the final fix up stuff on my house before it hits the market, I’m not going to have much free time.

We saw this little cutie when we were out house hunting this morning.

His mom jumped into the weeds while he was looking at us and when he turned and found her not there, he freaked out.

He ran around by the side of the road for a bit, until he hopped into the bushes just a little bit down from where his mom jumped in. He was so tiny! I totally wanted to take him home as a pet. I bet he’d make a great running partner!