Spring is almost here!

Whew! It really just occurred to me that I’ve only been running for 6 weeks after a 3 month injury. However, to my amazement, my workouts are indicating that I’m in at least as good of shape as I was at the end of last February. My workout this week consisted of 5 x mile repeats with 0.26 mile recovery. Due to the footing this week, this was an ideal workout because our apartment complex does an excellent job plowing and salting the parking lot. I have a 0.5 mile loop where I measured out a mile consisting of close to 2 laps. I really didn’t know what to expect going into this workout. The weather was around 30, not much wind and good footing. I ran the first repeat in 4:54 and really didn’t feel very good, but I was able to hit 4:56, 4:56, 4:55, 4:56 for the last four repeats. I really thought I struggled through this workout but the repeats seemed to get easier as I went on which is a good sign. For the sake of curiosity, after the workout I checked the variation on the resting time and to my surprise it ranged from 1:54-1:56. While I’m very happy with the workout, my muscles are very imbalanced and my stride feels extraordinarily awkward. Swimming was instrumental in maintaining my aerobic fitness during my injury, but I have decided that I need to give it up for now and replace the swimming with morning runs and core work to help get my weight down, improve running efficiency, and balance my muscle strength. Hobbling around for 3 months really did not help my athleticism, balance, and balance of muscle strength. All and all, I really can’t complain and I’m really just enjoying being outside.

This past week consisted of mostly easy running where I implemented 2 two-a-days and ended up hitting 84 miles. The next weeks should really indicate where my current fitness level is as I’m going to repeat a workout that I ran at this time last year and also hop in my first post injury race (5k). The Twin Cities Marathon was my last race and I missed the time that I was shooting for, but I’m the most motivated that I’ve ever been. The next few weeks of training should be a lot of fun to see where I’m at and get back running with some of the guys on our club team. It’s snowing outside today, but it’s getting to be that time of year where the weather should start warming up a bit. Here’s to enjoying the transition. Hope training is going well for everyone else. Looking forward to seeing people out this spring. It's been too long.