It’s not really week 1, but I don’t know what else to say.

Monday: 5.4 mi, road (Lakewalk + Minnesota Point)
Tuesday: rest (FE prep course)
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: 5.4 mi, paved trail (Lakewalk)
Friday: 7.2 mi, paved trail (Lakewalk)
Saturday: 5.2 mi, paved trail (Lakewalk)
Sunday: 8.1 mi, trail (Hartley)
Total: 31.3 mi

I’m back! After 3 weeks of minimal running, I was able to have a week worthy of being considered training. Although I’ve had to drag myself out for almost every run. That was a theme this week: lollygagging around, finding excuses not to leave the house. On Monday I didn’t start running til 7 PM. On Sunday, I didn’t start til after 3. This isn’t going to work very well as I return to higher mileage, but as it gets warmer, I hope it’ll get easier to get out.

Monday, once I did get it, was amazing. I ran on the Lakewalk, and while it was windy, it wasn’t horribly cold. The lake was roaring, like it was going to vomit the Edmund Fitzgerald back up onto the shore. It was invigorating, and I was smiling the whole time. I love living here.

Tuesday, it snowed, so I did shovel twice. That counts as a strength workout. Wednesday I stayed late at work, and decided not to run. Since I was only planning on running about 30 miles, 2 rest days worked out.

After suffering through a cold one on Thursday (it was in the low teens, though a bit warmed than predicted), Friday was invigorating. It was 38 F, even at like 6 PM, and the moon was full. It was perfect, other than a bit of GI cramping that turned out to be nothing.

Saturday I got up early and walked about a mile to the counter protest in solidarity with Planned Parenthood. It lasted about 2 hours, and then I walked home. I was a bit cold (although I remembered to bring some Hot Hands with me) and my legs were kind of tired from standing for 2 hours, so I rested before my run. Even though it was just below freezing (and therefore relatively nice), I was still chilled when I headed out to run. It was damp and the air was misty, so it took a little while before I felt comfortable. By chance, I saw my boss while I was running through Lakeside, which was nice.

Sunday I ran at Hartley, which was a great confidence booster. I ran the 8 miles at a 15:02 pace, which is a great sign for the race. Like I said previously, I need to run the first 25K at about a 15:2X pace in order to make the intermediate cutoff. If I can run 8 at Hartley under that, while running on soft snow and going up some challenging hills, I am in a good spot.

I’m happy to be back to training and to have a concrete goal race. I’m also happy I haven’t lost that much fitness, despite my setbacks. The forecast for the near future looks great, so maybe that will help with the procrastination. My focus for this upcoming week will be quality sleep. I’ve been staying up way too late lately (I’m reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, and it’s riveting), and I need to get more than 5 hours of sleep a night. My resting heart rate is higher than I’d like it to be, so I’m hoping additional sleep will help.