It’s snowing. I look up from my monitor and see the fat flakes drifting down onto the bushes outside. (The view out my office window these days is 80% bushes; I might have to trim them myself since the people who take care of the lawn and flowerbeds have been ignoring the bushes this year.) I’m happy to see the snow, as I plan to go running tonight and have come to the conclusion that I’m a foul weather runner. Give me cold and wind and the threat of precipitation over hot and sunny any day I have to get my mass moving at a speed greater than a stroll.
My first post-vacation workout did not go well. I strapped on my HRM and headed out last Saturday only to find that I could barely run at all without my heart rate zooming out of my target zone. Worse, my shin muscles were staging some sort of protest and hurt like a painful thing. (The right one was particularly dedicated to this cause and kept the discomfort dial turned up even when I was walking.) Sure, I’d been feeling a little sick but I didn’t think I’d lost that much condition. I ended up with an average per mile pace a full minute slower than my last pre-vacation workout. The good news was a) I’d made the effort and b) my hip didn’t hurt at all.
Tuesday I was feeling a little worse but figured that I might as well try working out since sitting around Monday night hadn’t made me all better. So what if it was chilly and gusty? I have a jacket and a fleece headband. I left the HRM at home and just did intervals. My shins seemed okay with it, and I came home feeling good enough to join Mr. Karen for the end of the video workout he was doing (I’d missed the squats and box step ups, fortunately). My average per mile was a whole minute and a half better than my previous outing, too.
It’ll be a while before I get back to where I was before I had to resort to PT, and if I think about that too much I get discouraged so I try not to think about it, try not to compare now with a year ago when I was getting ready to run my second race. Right now, I’m targeting a 5K at the end of March. Surely I can manage that, even with the holidays and ski season coming up.
It’s hard to believe that just a month ago, I was melting from the heat.
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