Yeah yeah...

Okay, so it's been a month almost since I posted. Not like anyone's reading this anyway. :)

Been a hectic month. School is over this week and I'll have a life again for about 28 days and then it's back to the last 2 semesters. Hopefully. It's entirely possible that the schedule will be impossible for me to handle with my job if it turns out the way I've heard it will. And I can't live without the job, so school will have to be the one that bites it if the schedules don't mesh. Anyway, not going to fret about that right now. I'll know more tomorrow.

Starting a new training plan. I'm still going to run in Detroit but I'm going to be very careful about it and be slow and not really do it as anything competitive. It's not like I have a snowball's chance in hell of winning anything...so I'm just going to go and have fun. :) I've changed my mind about doing the Capital City River Run half marathon on 9/30 and instead I'm going to do the Big House Big Heart 5k in Ann Arbor. Much more fun, and I joined a team that is going to do either 10 miles or another 3.1 miles before the actual race so you can get in a half marathon or 10k for the day. I'll be wearing Maize and Blue of course!

I did the Ele's Place 5K on 7/22. Took over 3 minutes off my previous time. My new PR is now 35:55 for a 5K. The reason I'm starting a new plan is because I know that running is something I want to do for life. And I don't feel that I've been making any gains in the last month..mainly because I think I'm pushing my bod too hard for what it's ready for right now. So, I bought Jack Daniel's book and I'm following the White plan starting in the Level III. I could probably start in the Red Level but I've been noticing that my HR is above where it really should be for optimal "easy" training runs, and that's something I really want to improve. If I'm constantly running in an anaerobic zone, then I'm not going to make any improvement. So I went out today and did the first day of training on the plan. Kept my HR below 80% (he states that 65-79% is where I should be during easy runs. My pace was pathetically slow but everything I read says that's what it should be when you're doing easy runs (obviously relative to one's normal pace). So I'm going to just double-fist it for a while and wear my HRM and my Garmin until I am really comfortable with where my HR is in a certain pace zone.

I'm also starting today to try and eat more healthfully. I have been pretty good, but I eat enough that I'm maintaining my weight and I'd really like to start losing. Since I've decided not to really train for the half marathon and instead treat it as more of a fun run/walk, I'm going to fuel myself just enough for my base-building and hopefully drop 10 or 15 more pounds before the end of October. I'd like to drop about 30 but I'll take whatever I can get. :)

Well, that's life in a nutshell lately. I'm off to enjoy some grilling and studying for my final peds exam. Glad this semester is almost over with! And glad that it's the last summer I'll have to give up! :D

Oh how I hate..to have to wait...

I have a mild (thank God!) case of peroneal tendonitis in my left ankle to go along with the PF in that foot. The peroneal tendon is the one that goes around the back of the lateral malleolus (ankle bone) and attaches to the side of the foot. And guess when it got aggravated? Running on the slant on Hwy 163 in San Diego. Doc said it's not bad and two weeks of no running, lots of stretching, ibuprofen and wearing my arch supports, arch strap and Strassburg sock should get rid of it, as well as ease up the PF I've been suffering from for months. I'm not too happy about not running. But he did say walking was fine, as was anything at the gym besides running on the treadmill. So I suppose I should listen to him and take it easy for a couple weeks.

It means I won't be fully ready for the local half mary, but I'll be fine for Detroit. I'm not sure about the Crim 10-miler in August. I still want to do it, but we'll have to see where I'm at at that point. Might go anyway just to enjoy the festivities. :)

So, today is a stretching/strengthening day. I'm going to go for a short walk when I get home and then stretch it out for an hour or so..maybe do some yoga. One thing he did say is that I have very stiff ankles..and that lots of stretching should help ease up those calf muscles and my achilles tendon, which should in turn help my ankles be a bit more flexible. And that, in turn, would help my running gait so I'm not slapping my foot down (which I noticed I do on the left foot). We shall see!

No running sucks!

So the last time I ran was Tuesday morning. I wanted to run on Thursday but I had a buttload of clinical paperwork to do (I'm a horrible procrastinator). Since my Friday night was taken already I knew I had to give up the Thursday trail run in order to get it done. Lesson learned. Friday morning I was going to get up but wasn't feeling so hot so figured I'd try and get it in between getting out of work and going to my NICU observation. That didn't work out either. My observation was from 7:15 pm to 10:30 pm and I had to get up at 3:45 to be ready for carpooling to A2 for clinicals. Thought maybe I'd get a run in afterwards. That didn't work out either. We got lost getting home from dropping off another student who doesn't live in Lansing and we were all so tired and slap-happy we missed the split to the highway we were supposed to take and ended up halfway to Battle Creek before I realized we weren't going the right way (I wasn't driving BTW..).

So I got home and went to a 4th of July party (yes, I know it was June 30th but they have the party the weekend before the holiday). I wasn't going to drink or stay late so I could get up this morning and go for a run with the Playmakers group. Okay, so that didn't work out either. ;)

So today I'm going to take it easy in the morning, get the remainder of homework I need to finish all out of the way and go for a run later this evening, without fail. I HAVE to or I'm going to start losing it! I did figure out though, that I can work off a 12 week training schedule for the half. If I plan on just walk/running the local half, I could wait until the end of July to start training for Detroit. I'd like to do the 10 mile Crim race in Flint in August too though..so I'm debating today about when to start my actual training plan. I tried to start on the 18th of this month, and the first week went well, but this week just wasn't meant to be..so I'm just considering it further recovery and officially I'm not going to start training until the 8th...since that's when I SHOULD have started training anyways seeing as how I've had a nagging ankle pain since San Diego.

Okay, enough rambling. I'll post something once I've actually gone for a run. ;)