January ( a little late)

With January 2015 about to go in the history books, I thought I would update with my own slices of what has been happening….

January – feels like this has been a long month! I started the year off with some lingering issues from the North Face 50k race. I focused on taking it easy post race and just walked, stretched, used a stretch band thing to try to stretch my tight-ass hamstring. Just took everything pretty slow and easy and tried to recover. Slowly, I beckoned myself out the front door and onto the roads and felt my legs find their stride. And I do mean, literally, “find their stride”. My legs felt so out of whack for a few weeks post race that my stride felt quite awkward and off balance. I was trying to pay attention to the whole, “don’t overcompensate in one area because some other part isn’t working”. Still, my stride felt really off. I got a couple of massages and it helped. Slowly. Massage, stretch, rest. Repeat. Luckily, I wasn’t in any hurry and I felt fine with taking my time. I was just glad for any day I could be outside, even if I was walking.
I also started doing a bunch of exercises at home; core work, push-ups (which I have been doing diligently every other day for over a year!) tri-dips, etc…I’ve gotten a nice little cool routine going and I love it. I’ve been doing it every day or every other day. Many days, I look forward to it! It’s great to come home and just start the routine and leave a work day behind (sitting, being indoors) and be totally focused on something healthy!

As January rolled along, I found I was simply running short distances 3-5 miles and I decided to start working on my speed again. So, I’m gradually doing that…adding in sprints or hill repeats at the end of a run. Training on the hills for the past 6 months really took a toll on any sort of speed I had…but that’s the trade off….endurance for speed. So, I’m fine with being back on the road for a bit. I’ll probably mix in a trail run 1x a week, but probably not more than that right now.

I am targeting my 5k pace first and then I will probably move on to 10k pace.
I’m just kinda loosely following some training advice online. Nothing too serious. Unless I want to really be more serious. We’ll see. I’ve never been very fast, but if I can get back to 8 minute miles for 10k distance, I’d be happy with that pace!

I ran my first 5k today in years! Man, that sure goes by a lot faster than 50k. It was flat & fast. I finished 26:15 @ 8:21 pace per mile. Good place to start. A good barometer as I move forward.

What’s next?