Changing up the scenery

This morning I met my friend Pam for a run.  We are both racing the Last Chance Half next month so getting a long run in together seemed like a good idea.  Plus Pam has two dogs that like to run and need a lot of exercise.  Perfect!

We met up at the Eau Claire Y.  It was sunny but pretty brisk.  Nice in the sun, but it is definitely cooler in the mornings around here!  Pam suggested running eastward towards the zoo and Inglewood which would be new scenery for me.  Let’s go!  We started along the north side of the Bow River and made our way to the zoo.  At first we were following a 4:1 plan but I found we were getting in a groove so I lengthened the run intervals out a bit.  When we hit the zoo we crossed the river and made our way into Inglewood.  Such pretty houses!  New pathways I had never been on before!  At times it can be a little sketch so I’m not sure I would run here on my own, but with Pam and the dogs it was good.  We continued back along the south side of the river, past Fort Calgary.  I discovered a cute place – Deane House Restaurant – for brunch and lunch.All in all, it was a great run.  The company was great and it was nice to be out enjoying the sunshine and seeing new parts of my town.  1:15 run, done!

After that Pam and I grabbed a coffee and then I made my way over to the Eau Claire Y.  I had a little business to take care of.  Cancelling my membership.  I put my membership on hold until November 1st, but that was as long as I could put it on hold for.  I’m not planning on swimming for awhile so this seemed like the right decision.  I can’t keep a membership at the gym downstairs at work and at the Y at the same time.  So…I’m sticking with the gym downstairs for awhile to keep up with strength training and Friday yoga!

Whose legs are these?

For those of you who are friends on Facebook, you may know that I ran the Thanksgiving 10K this weekend.  That’s right, it was Thanksgiving in Canada here last weekend!

Well, there isn’t too much I can say about the race.  My legs were still super tired.  I ran faster than Melissa’s, but that was mostly thanks to the flat pathway we ran along the river in downtown Calgary.  Post race was fun as my mom ran the race as well along with my friend Pam.  We met at the finish line and grabbed our free mini pizza from Papa John’s and gabbed over food.

I ran for 30 minutes on Tuesday and the legs still felt awful.  Tired and still so far from the paces I was running before Ironman.  Today I had a 45 minute run on tap and it was the first time that my legs actually felt like they were on board!  My pace was still slow but I’ll take it.  Just the fact that my legs felt like they weren’t going to collapse under me was a good start!

Total Body Blitz

I probably should have been more specific when I said I was back on a plan.  True, it is a plan, but these first few weeks are just about getting my body used to running again.  My runs range from 30 minutes to 1 hour with no real speed work.  Just a few fartleks at the end of one run or running drills at the end of another.  Slowly but surely running is starting to feel a bit better.  I ran with Kelly on Tuesday and we had a good run where we pondered just how much we thought we had recovered.  The conclusion that we came to?  That while we feel good on a day to day basis we are still tired and workouts are still feeling harder then they used to.  I guess it does take awhile to recover from an Ironman…

Following my plan to mix things up I went to my first group fitness class in ages to the gym downstairs at work on Wednesday.  It was called Total Body Blitz and it promised a total body strength workout that would give me that Hollywood sculpted look.  No kidding!  It was a 45 minute class with a ton of squats, lunges, push ups, dead lifts, bicep curls…you name it.  By the end of the class my muscles were shaking.  Thursday was a total case of delayed onset muscle soreness.  I had completely forgotten that I had some of these muscles in my body.

Yeah, I’ll totally be back next week…

Getting back at it…

Wow, is it really October already?  September seemed to just fly by.  I pretty well took the whole month off and just enjoyed doing other things…besides training.  So what have I been up to?

I ran a whopping three times, one of which was the Melissa’s 10K Road Race.  And yeah…that race pretty well sucked since running felt awful.  I honestly felt like I hadn’t run for a year, not just a month.  On the plus side I got to meet Laurel who is just as wonderful as you would imagine!

Anyhow, I’m back on a program now so it is time to get my butt off the couch.  A program for what you might be asking…

I decided that I am going to drop the half marathon part of the Goofy Challenge.  I’m going to run the 5K as a warm up and train for the marathon.  I’m hoping to gain some speed back and make a good attempt at a marathon PR.  Right now I’m not sure how much speed is going to come back because I have slowed down a lot….but that is the goal!  I am dropping swimming for the moment and I signed up for a Friday yoga class to mix things up a bit.  Hopefully I can get some strength training in too.

So there we go….back on a plan!!