Running Chick

I finished up my last run of July tonight.  8 miles around Houghton & Hancock.  It was super windy and my legs felt like lead.  Not my best run, but it is what it is.  I calculated (erm, SportTracks calculated) my totals for the month and I was surprised to see that I ran 110 miles in July.

June's total was 68.33 miles so that's quite a jump.  My mileage is only going to go higher because...

So, yeah.

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.

It finally feels like summer around here, what with the 90 degree temps we’ve had for the past few days.  It’s been nice, but I really miss having central a/c.

I’ve been dealing with some left knee issues since April that really got bothersome in June.  I thought it was a tight IT band so I really worked on getting that stretched out, only to find that the pain didn’t go away.  After a particularly bad run that had me limping, wincing and cussing the entire way, I consulted with my physical therapist friend who diagnosed me with patellar tendonitis.  I didn’t have to stop running (“..I won’t tell you to stop running, because I know you won’t..” says PT) but I did cut my mileage and pacing way back (four days to three), quit running on the cambered roads around my house and did lots of stretching/strengthening exercises.  Particularly the ones here and here.  The exercises in the second link were the ones that really made a big difference for me, I noticed improvements in mobility and decreased pain after about three days and I’m just about back to normal about two and a half weeks later.  I’ll probably start to slowly rebuild my mileage this week and hope to be back on track in the next couple of weeks.

My totals for June (bum knee and all) were 68 miles running and 55 miles biking.

This week I did two five milers and one hot, humid, miserable 10 miler early Saturday morning.  My overall pace ended up being around 11:46/mile (gah) and I’m very lucky I was able to get that. My body does not do well in the heat and humidity.

There were a lot of people out on the trail that morning, we all probably thought we’d beat the heat and get out very early.  Everybody I passed was drenched in sweat, had beet red faces, and huffing and puffing like crazy.  Haha, that Mother Nature sure is a jokester, she got all of us but good.

Josh has been training for RAGBRAI (two weeks!) and I’ve been riding with him a couple of times/week.  On the 4th of July, we did a 50 mile ride from Calumet to the Jampot in Eagle River, and back with stops at the Fitz (Short’s on tap!), Drift Inn and Shute’s.  That was the longest I’d ridden in quite some time, it was a lot of fun.

Wildlife report!

Modest Sphinx moth. 3” wingspan. Cute in a please-don’t-eat-me Mothra kinda way.

Raccoon prints on the grill.

Our bear friend, who is apparently training to join the circus.  Good thing we have our garbage barrels outside and he can train whenever he feels like it.

Just don't hit my car, dummy.