Back to the Basics

The New Year has started for fairly well for me training wise. I took two weeks off in December after the final XTERRA race of 2014 and after about a week of running three miles a day and working on gluteus medius exercises I graduated to running five or six for the second half of last week. I put in 32 miles for the December 29 to January 4 week, which wasn’t half bad considering I started the week out with three days of three mile runs.

This week, I feel like I am finally getting back into the swing of things. I logged 39.5 miles on seven runs and got back to a rhythm of getting up running and then heading to work. It’s still a little tricky with timing out my runs because the sun doesn’t come up until about 7:20 or 7:30 and it’s been even later some days when we have a lot of cloud cover. All that means is that I had a few days where I got to work later than I would have liked, but I ran the Flowery Branch 5/7 mile route more than 200 times last year and I’m just not feeling like running that route right now. Unfortunately, there’s not much in terms of route options from the office and even though I’ve been running the same out and back run on the greenway, running from home at least gives me a few more options. Running from home also allows me to run on trails, which has been a welcome change.

I ran on the greenway six days this week, but I did get in a good eight miler at Little Mulberry on Sunday. It’s always tough starting over after taking extended time off, so eight miles might not sound like much, but right now running eight on trails and feeling pretty good felt like forward progress. It’s always hard mentally when you see what other people are doing for their training or racing when you aren’t in shape. I just have to keep reminding myself that it’s all part of the process and my goals are for races and runs down the line, not tomorrow. I just have to stay the course, work on building things back up and I will be ready to roll when my goal races come around in the coming weeks and months. Still, there’s nothing worse than starting from scratch.

The polar vortex didn’t help the starting from scratch thing either. Last year, when it got cold I was going from running five miles five days a week to between 5-10 seven days a week, so it wasn’t as big of a deal, but when the temps dropped to single digits and below zero, that wasn’t fun. I have to admit though, I saw a lot of tweets and facebook statuses from people back home running in -20 wind chill, so I had to suck it up. I refuse to let myself get soft of cold temperatures.

Weekly breakdown
Monday – Greenway five + weight room
Tuesday – Greenway five + weight room
Wednesday – Greenway five + weight room
Thursday – Greenway five
Friday – Greenway five
Saturday – Little Mulberry eight
Sunday – Greenway five

I almost took Sunday off, but Amanda made homemade doughnuts so I felt like I needed to get something in. The two biggest things for me this week were getting in the weight room and staying off the roads. The greenway is only paved for ¾ of a mile and rest is gravel or trails which was awesome. I need to keep getting in the weight room to work on leg strength and start working in some core next week.

One final note on this week, I ran most of my runs in my La Sportiva Helios. I really like that shoe and I’m probably going to invest in a new pair, but I must admit I was pretty stoked to get a fresh pair of Saucony Rides. I put about 500 miles on my last pair and hadn’t replaced the since before training camp, so it felt nice to get my feet into a new pair of shoes. I’ve been running in Rides since I worked at GBRC and served me extremely well over that time. It was more fun when I was running for Saucony Hurricanes and got them for free/50 percent off, but still that’s my go to everyday trainer. I am looking forward to checking out the breakthru when those come out though.

On to next week…
Next week will be more of the same for me. Work is in a bit of a holding pattern right now, so I’ll be sticking close to home or the office for my runs this week. Once we hire a coach, then I can start to mix in some different things after work. Training wise, I’ll be looking for more of the same consistency in terms of pace and distance. I also plan on working in one workout, either hills or a light tempo run. The first race of 2015 the Dirty Spokes Frosted Foot race at Central Park on Saturday. I’m going to get tuned up, but I’m not really looking at any race as a race until February, so I just need to go out there and get used to running hard again. It’s a 7.5 miler though, so a blow up is probably in my future.