Running Chick

It's been over a month since I last ran, thanks to the cold/sinus infection/ear infection thing I was plagued with for most of December. Today's whopping two mile (Woo!!1!) run was slow, but it still felt good to finally get back on track.  The first mile or so was flat & decending, then I stepped my way up the hills back home.  Up a block, run a block, up a block, run a block.  I did four repeats.  In retrospect, I probably should have waited until I had a week or two base built up before I started punishing myself with hills, but oh wells.  No pain, no gain.  Sorry about the cliche.

 The weather was a balmy 24 degrees with a slight wind.

For some reason which I have yet to determine, my Sport Tracks report refuses to show the route line on the course map using Firefox.  It seems to work fine in IE.  That's so aggravating.  So, I'm going to start using mapmyrun.com for my route maps, and Sport Tracks for the rest of the particulars.  This is going to cause some double-duty for me, but at least I'll be able to see my own maps in my own blag!

 Here's the report of my stellar 2-miler and the map:

In other news, I seem to have acquired a slight lower back strain which I can only assume is due to heaving snow around yesterday. My lower back is really achy. It's not bothered by running, but it's making itself known all other times. Hope this doesn't last for long, it's a real pain.

So.  Today marked day #1 of training for Journeys half marathon in May.  I'm excited to get back into a routine because one thing I've discovered about myself through running is that I'm really anal retentive/obsessive about my training.  I need a program to tell me when, how long and at what pace to run.  Without a program, I'm useless.  I simply cannot force myself to run regularly without the structure of a training program. 

There are pros and cons to my little problem.  The good - I will follow a program to the letter, without fail.  And, well, that's about it for the good. 

The bad?  Gee, where do I begin?  If I don't meet the required pace the the program says, I feel defeated.  If I don't meet the mileage, for whatever reason, I feel defeated.  I cannot end a run on anything other than the exact mileage.  If I go over the exact mileage, I must go to the next quarter mile.  If I miss the quarter mile mark, I go to the next quarter mile.  The longest I've ever added to a run was a mile. Oh, and it drives me NUTS that my Garmin gives me mile alerts at the point where it's just about to change from the .00 mile to the .01 mile.  And yes, I have gone to the next quarter mile before quitting, but now I mostly make sure the press the stop button as soon as it it hits the exact mileage.  When I was researching training plans for this HM, I considered one that went by minutes rather than miles.  i.e. run 40 minutes rather than 4 miles.  But then I started thinking that there was no way I'd be able to run 40 minutes and end on some crazy non-quarter mile mileage (horrors!), so then I'd have to get to an even mileage, which would probably put me over the minutes I was supposed to run, which would then cause my head to explode.

*sigh*

Okay, more.  I must be chewing gum at all times.  If I leave the house without gum, I will go back and get some.  Even if I've driven to a running trail.  Come to think of it, I can't do anything sports related without gum.  Skiing, snowblowing (that's a sport, sure), shoveling, aerobics.  WTF.  Do I have some strange connection between my legs and my jaw?

I compulsively watch my Garmin when I'm running to make sure I'm running at the EXACT PACE that my schedule calls for.  Must not run slower.  Must not run faster.  Must run at exact pace.  When the run is over, I obsessively analyze the running stats from my Garmin.  Pace, elevation, splits, route...cripes, I'm insane.

Wait, where was I going with this?

......Great!  Now I'm now obsessed with my obsessions!

Oh yeah. 

Training started today.  I was supposed to run 2 miles.  Except that the weather wasn't cooperating.  We had a blizzard overnight which didn't deposit a ton of snow in my yard but made some major drifts in my walkway.  Also, the plows created a huge bump in my driveway (thanks city plows, you suck!).  Those two things, along with it being around five degrees with a windchill of -10 didn't make for a good running day.  So I decided to reschedule the first run until tomorrow.  Man, that sucked.  Especially when I was about 20 minutes into my snow removal, mentally arguing with myself about whether I should go running, and some lady jogged by my house.  I stood there and watched her run all the way to the end of my street and around the corner.  I had all I could do to not drop the scoop and change into my running clothes and get my two miles in.  But, there was way no way I was going to leave my snow half-scooped (yet another one of my anal retentive qualities). In order to not feel like such a loser, I decided to count my hour's worth of snow removal as cross training.  I did work up a serious sweat - that damn snow is heavy - so I guess it should count for something, right?

...right?

If only it were true in my crazy world. 

 *sigh*