It was nice outside this morning, but it looked like a storm was coming. I had a meeting scheduled for 11:15, but I figured it would be over by lunch, which is when I usually head out. But then I got a phone call from the piano tuner. He was scheduled to be here at 12:15. Of course, he didn’t actually get here until almost 12:30. And the storm clouds were dark and menacing. But I decided to run anyway, because that’s what you do.

Most of the first mile was pretty rough. I switched from my 3/4 to my 2/3 pattern for breathing sooner than normal. That made me wonder if I was sick, or didn’t sleep well last night. As I headed up the hill to the round-about, my feet felt really heavy. It seemed this run would be even worse than Tuesday’s run, which was fairly upsetting, since I took a full day off from everything yesterday. I really wanted to switch to walking at the top of that hill, but I didn’t. As I ran towards the park in the center of The Cedars, I kept thinking that if I pushed too hard at first that the rest of the run would be even worse… shuffling. I kept pushing those thoughts out, but I did finally start walking about half way around the park. And then something amazing happened. I caught my breath pretty quickly. I started running again before I reached the road out to Canyon. I ran all the way and felt really good. I was focusing on leading with my knees and letting my feet kick up behind me. It worked.

The next thing I knew, I was back to the park, back to the round-about, and heading down to the church. I rounded that corner and headed up the next hill. It was a struggle to keep my breathing on rhythm, and I switched to walking again where someone carved the Van Halen logo into the sidewalk. It’s not far from there to the corner and I started running again half way up that hill. I didn’t stop again until I was home. That last mile really felt good. A few times I even thought I may need to start adding more distance to my run, but I wasn’t that crazy today.

The storm never came. I stayed ahead of it and set my new personal record for the loop. 33:25.

Clearly I haven’t progressed to the point where I fully recover by the next day. Yesterday was my best run so far this year, but today I was back to walking more than I would like. On the other hand, I did walk a mile or two last night and then I rode my bike trainer for an hour. Maybe that is playing into it. Bottom line, I stopped running and started walking before I even got to the 1 mile mark today. I ended up walking at least 5 minutes of the loop. Charmaine met up with me at about the 2 mile mark and we ran the last mile together. When we got home, the timer said 35:55, so it was still a decent outing.

I’ll take tomorrow off from running, so hopefully the run on Thursday will be another good one.

I didn’t run last Wednesday, per my usual schedule, but then it turned cold again and snowed both Thursday and Friday. On Thursday I did walk the 3 miles, wearing a coat, and then we rode our bike trainers for 90 minutes that night. I didn’t do anything all weekend, so I had plenty of rest before starting my run today.

I felt pretty good today. I ran the whole first mile, then walked for about 30 seconds, then ran the next mile and walked for about 2 minutes, then ran the rest of the way home. I knew I had walked more distance today than I did last Monday, but I figured my running, especially the last mile, was probably a little faster. So I figured I would come in around the 35 minute mark. When I got home, let myself inside, and saw the stopwatch at 34:01, I was really happy. That’s a new personal record for this loop.

Eventually I’m going to have to start swimming and biking outside again. Right now we ride our trainers at night sometimes, but biking outside at night won’t work, so I may need to figure out a new schedule for running once it starts to warm up.

I only walked once today. I ran the first 2 miles without switching from running to walking. That’s the longest I’ve gone without switching, so I was happy. I kept telling myself that I may run the whole thing without ever switching to walking, but I finally did when I got to the last big hill around the 2 mile marker. I was pretty beat-up by the time I gave up and switched to walking, so when I switched back to running at the top of the hill, it was very slow. In fact, it’s pretty generous to even call it running; it was more shuffling than running. But it wasn’t walking, and that was important.

I finished in 35:56, which is slower than yesterday’s “good” run, but still faster than any other run I’ve done this year. So I’m quite happy with the time.

The thing I’m not as happy about is my legs. When I finished running, they were in pain. They didn’t hurt while I was running, not even the last few steps of the run, but as soon as I stopped running, they hurt. I stretched out a bit and felt a lot better, but I was really hoping they would feel as good as they did yesterday. Oh well. I probably won’t run tomorrow, so they should have a chance to recover.

I have been using the Daily Plate over at LiveStrong.com to track my eating and exercise habits for the last month or so. It’s really great for tracking food intake, but it’s pretty terrible at tracking exercise. At least it hasn’t been easy for me to track and view reports on the things I do. It’s fine for tracking time spent doing something, but not very good at tracking things like weights, reps, etc. Even tracking distances running or biking isn’t great.

I’m starting to make some progress with my running and I don’t want to forget that I have improved. Two weeks ago I was lucky to finish my 3.1 mile loop under 40 minutes. Last week I finished under 37 minutes twice (36:15 and 36:20).

Today I finished it in 34:54.

That isn’t just my best time for the loop, I also had what I would consider a really good run. I only switched from running to walking 3 times, for a total of about 2 minutes spent walking instead of running. But more importantly, I felt good almost the entire time I was running. My legs never hurt during the run and they don’t feel sore after running. I kept catching myself enjoying the run. It still seems strange, but I’ll take it.