Lucky 13

This week has gone by pretty quickly and I have a while free now, so I wanted to jot some things down.

After spending Monday getting fully recovered from my half-marathon, I got back into my regular training regimen. This week may be slightly lower mileage due to a day off on Monday, but I've actually been working out harder than before. I've finally added my core routine back to my morning workouts, and I'm now doing two workouts a day every day except for long-run-Sundays.

I'm being careful to keep my mileage in the 60s, so my morning workouts only consist of a pool-run or bike ride. I find two really nice benefits to these morning workouts. One is that I'm able to basically double my aerobic exercise per day without adding too much more stress on my joints. The other, and if anything this may be more important, is that it loosens me up for my afternoon workouts. For example, I've been doing intervals or tempo on Wednesdays, and I've often found that my Thursday runs feel stiff and slow for the first 20 or 30 minutes. Well, having a workout in the morning, be it a pool run or a bike ride, let's me get that stiffness taken care of before I even lace up my running shoes that afternoon. That way, I may feel a little stiff in the pool, but that's okay. Once I get to my afternoon run, I'm ready to run at 6:00 pace instead of having to waste the first half of the run just getting loose.

Anyways, so that's been going well. Wednesday I did my first interval workout in a while. I went down into Ft. Pierce where they have a pretty nice track. Unfortunately, the track is around a football field which they were watering with sprinklers while I was there. It was almost fun playing gauntlet on the warmup, trying to dodge the plumes of water being shot onto the track, but once I started the workout, it became pretty annoying. My shoes and socks were quickly drenched which about doubled the weight of my feet. All in all, it was still a decent workout and it was nice to get moving quickly again.

I also managed to get some employment this week, though it was only a one time thing. I helped my grandmother's neighbor set up her computer and tried to get AOL set up, which was far more complicated than it should have been. Anyways, I made some decent money, so it's all good.

Yesterday (Thursday), I had a pretty decent run, despite it being 80+ degrees and humid. I did an 8 mile out/back with the out at 23:55 and the back at 24:04, quite comfortably. My moderate pace seems to have settled between 5:55 and 6:15 pace, which I think my lungs have been okay with since Ecuador, but my legs are just finally getting used to. I'm glad, though, because I feel like training with a slightly higher turnover has made me a lot smoother and will hopefully give me more speed when track season comes around.

I got on the mailing list of a local running store and it turns out there are actually a lot of races around here. There's a 5k this weekend and a 10k next, so I may jump in one or both for kicks, depending on how I'm feeling. I often use Saturdays as a tempo day, so this would work out well (and maybe give me the opportunity to interact with some people who eat dinner after 5:00.

Anyways, I'm still not sure what my plans are for the end of this stay. There's been a lot of confusion about when my grandmother wants me to leave/what my parents want to do/how I'm going to get home, etc. I think the current plan is that my parents may fly down for a few days or a week or so and then my dad and I will drive to Phish before heading home. But who knows... it's all crazy, as usual.

Also, not sure if I mentioned this but it looks like I might be heading to New Mexico for a week or so in March with the Hagers which should be a lot of fun. Hopefully, it'll all work out.

So, that's about it. Not a whole lot else to say. I'll try to keep writing when exciting things are happening.