Me, My Garmin, My Shuffle and Myself
The last three weeks have been great for training. During it though I have been pretty much on my own with the exception of my Garmin watch and ipod shuffle. As my mileage steadily climbs each week so do my long runs and I am happy to say that I am finally back on a consistent schedule of Sunday long runs. Last week I put together a 26km run and this week I did 30km. The long run is probably my favorite run of the whole week and I find with the sheer duration of this run it gives me a lot of time to think. This Sunday long run will be a group affair with runners from the LMElite group heading out to Walnut Grove, my neck of the woods for a long run with an up tempo section. I am looking forward to this run and the plan for me is to hang in as long as I feel I can but to also add to the mileage total that I ran for last Sunday’s long run so 35km is the goal in mind. With the conclusion of this week I will be starting some workouts next week, I will have three solid weeks of mileage so I think this is the next logical step but I am still undecided to what specifically I will do.
I got back into my tent this week, I dropped a bunch of cash on the thing so I might as well get back to using it. Altitude wise I will be starting out in lower Albuquerque for 5 days, then heading to upper Albuquerque for the next 5 days, making a road trip down route 66 and spending 5 days in Flagstaff before ending up at the base of Snow Bowl for the duration of my altitude stay.
While I am starting to add the little things, like the altitude tent, weight routine and Medicine ball, I have gotten back to another helpful practice during training; regular massage. It’s funny because I say the same thing every time a get a massage after a long long lay off from doing so, it helps and I feel way better during my runs when doing so. I had a massage Thursday and it was painful; I knew it would be but man parts of me were really tight but the pain was worth it because I know it will loosen things up and make my daily training go a little smoother. Later that day I headed out on a 21km run along the Fort to Fort trail, which was on flood watch and had many road blocks I had to jump over, and I felt really good; I ran the same out and back I did just the day before at around the same effort but covered the run much faster the day of my massage; so I’m sold, again, weekly massages it is.
So with things heading in the right direction I am starting to think about my next marathon. The problem with marathons are that you need to register and commit months in advance to these races but when you are a bit out of shape and just starting back it is hard to gauge when you will be ready to race one at your optimal fitness. Regardless you need to think and start planning out that schedule and right now that is what I am doing. I have some ideas of what I could be ready to race in the near future and some races that may be a bit more realistic with my current schedule, so I will plan for both and try to iron out the final details of those in the next 10 days.
