conversation

We had most of the crew for the Thursday morning run today.  Diana and Mark made it along with Shan and I.  We had our usual good conversation and plenty of laughs.   It's interesting how we all circulate around with our conversation especially if we haven't seen one person in a while.  I found myself talking with Diana and as we are talking I realize it's been several months since I've seen her and immediately there is more to talk about.  We talked about the new catitat, and the possibility of Freddie being gay and if cats can be gay or not and other cool stuff like that.  We engage in some very deep conversations some Thursday mornings!!

miles

Got in a 6 miler Friday morning in the neighborhood before we headed to Kerrville for the weekend and did the 7 mile loop at LBL yesterday after work.

Even though my running miles have been off I've been pretty steady with my crunches and push ups and that will serve me well when I can start to build up my mileage again.

time will tell

I've got to get myself in gear if I'm going to continue to be a runner.  I've averaged 52 miles per month the last 3 months.  Not so good.  I figured up my weekly average since 6/1/98 (date when I quit smoking).  I'm down to 20.4 miles per week in the time.  My average mileage has been steadily decreasing the last 4yrs with all the family shit going on.  I suppose a lot of people would be pretty happy with the miles I've done the last almost 15yrs but I just see the 4yr decline and wonder if I can pull it back together.  My longtime goal has been to maintain the 20 miles per week for 20yrs.  That's 5yrs and 3 months from now.  Time will tell

walking

Right out of the gate this morning I was in oxygen debt on our weekly run this.  Usually I'll try to limit my talking for the first mile or so to get in a good breathing rhythm and to get warmed up but this morning I was busy talking right away.  We put the cash down on our floors and signed the contract yesterday so we're pretty darn excited.  Something else I'm seriously excited about is that Jay has agreed to come over again this Saturday to help install the cat door and do the pantry tear out.  Jay is really saving my ass on the house stuff the last couple of weeks.  He'll never have to bring another beer to our house.

Back to the run. Shan is still recovering from barely missing qualifying for the Boston marathon last Sunday and I'm just plain slow anyway so Shan wasn't too hard on me about wanting to take 4 WALK BREAKS. We are in our 5th year of our Thursday morning runs and I cannot ever remember us walking that much.  Our time was still 1:11, pretty respectable for all the walking we did.

sluggish

I got in 5 miles at Ken's yesterday after work.  I didn't feel so hot.  I was still really sluggish from eating like crap all weekend and drinking too many beers Saturday evening.  The 5 miles took me nearly 90 minutes.  I could have pushed harder but decided to just take it easy and try and enjoy myself.  I did my sit up program this morning and am planning on another 5 miles after work this evening.

what I needed

I got what I needed this morning!!  A hard 7 miles at LBL with Shan.  We did it in 1:07.  I needed to feel the pain after everything that's gone on the last week.  Everything I had today was burning but somehow I kept on contributing to the conversation.  Thankfully Shan had a lot to talk about while I was injecting as much oxygen as I could into my lungs.  We even took a couple of walk breaks along the way too.

It looks like this month is going to be toast as far as running mileage goes.  14 so far this month and the next 2 Saturdays are pretty much spoken for.  This Saturday Jay has offered his services all day to help me finish the cat porch and next Saturday will be the demolition of the kitchen pantry in preparation to have our floors redone.  So, what the monthly mileage will boil down to is what I feel like the next 2 Sundays.  And, what that boils down to is my Saturday beer consumption.  I have a goal of NOT drinking this Saturday and getting in some decent mileage (15ish) Sunday.  We shall see how it goes.

hard

7 miles at Lady Bird Lake this morning.  Right now the plan is to do 7 tomorrow morning and the group run Thursday.  With that in mind I couldn't justify taking it easy today especially after not running at all since last Thursday.  Hard tomorrow is out because there's no way I'm running hard the day before the Thursday group run.  So, that meant hard today.  After a couple of miles I mixed a couple of sessions of fartlek.  I followed one with some very easy running and another one with some walking.  I didn't work too hard but it was definitely a good change up.  A little bit at a time will get it done.

I got a new waist belt holder for my phone so I can take pictures for my blog whenever I want too.  I probably should have zoomed in a bit but I'm still experimenting.