The Doldrums

It's Thursday and I haven't posted anything since last Thursday. I'm sorry I've kept you waiting, but you have been patient, and if you've been following this blog for very long you are surely aware by now that I've been known to take much more than a week off. Hopefully you weren't waiting on pins and needles for the latest update, and I would find it hard to believe if you were haha. So what's been going on? Well it has been a busy week of running, work, and school. These are all good things though, especially the running.
A week ago I didn't do much running so it's a very good thing that I got back out there ever day this week! Last week I only ran on Thursday and Sunday. You may remember this post last week when I said I was going to run a couple of miles on Friday and a pace run on Saturday... well neither of those events took place. After work Friday I was too beat from the long week to think about running but I went to bed that night fully intending on running the planned pace run with my usual group. The alarm went off at 6:30 and I promptly turned it off, rolled over and went back to sleep. As I assumed I would I got texts from a few running buddies, jokingly giving me a hard time about not showing up (we do that to each other....helps keep us honest haha). When it came down to answering why, I didn't really have a reason other than "I just wasn't feeling it".

Milo and Tock from Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth

Do you ever have days like that? When I was in 6th grade we read a book called The Phantom Tollbooth. Have you read it? I thought it was a book most every kid had read, but when I started asking friends and co-workers this week they all had the same look on their face as if I had just asked them if they had read Qur'an. I hope you've read it because this will make a lot more sense if you had. Funny side note: thinking about this book this week caused me to order it from Amazon so I can read it again because there are a lot of puns and other idioms that I think I'll understand more now. Okay back to the book because I did bring it up for a reason! Saturday I felt like I was in The Doldrums surrounded by 'Lethargians" (really people read the book!) In the Doldrums, you're not allowed to "do" anything; no thinking, no laughing, nothing. That's how my day went, at least until 7:00 PM when a few running friends convinced me I needed to get out and meet them at a new bar that opened in the neigborhood. I just felt burnt out and wanted to sleep in on a Saturday for once. It seemed like it had been ages (overdramatic I know) since I had done that and I clearly had nothing better to do all day than peruse Netflix. It was a day that was apparently needed but hopefully not again for a while!

Sunday Funday

Sunday morning I met a few friends for a nice 8 miler, followed that with breakfast and homework. I went to a friends place to watch the Super Bowl, where I probably had too much wine and played more Euchre than actually watched the game and I'm okay with that.

KAR Member reception run nice and easy!

Monday night I attended the Kalamazoo Area Runners member reception fun run 5k and won a water bottle as a door prize! Can't argue with free running gear!

Morning Madness!

Tuesday morning I resumed pre work running with my buddy Jonathon. We put down a brisk, morning 8 miles, which I of course followed up with Panera breakfast :-)

Midweek Midlong...

Wednesday night I decided I needed a good midweek midlong (probably not a word) run in. I'm trying to follow the paces from the mcmillan pace calculator better so I was aiming for a 7:30 pace and was pretty close to it for the 10 miles.

Today was a rest day and well needed too. I'm at 21 miles for the week already and tomorrow morining I'm meeting Jonathon at 4:45 for an easy 8 miles. Add to that Saturday's planned 18 mile long run and that will put me just a little under 50 for the week.

Tonight I attended a runners gait analysis and core strength clinic, a benefit of being a member of the Kalamazoo Area Runners. This post is already long enough so I'll go into more depth about it in the next post but surprisingly my form wasn't as out of wack as I assumed it was!

I hope you're all having wonderful weeks, and if not well tomorrow is Friday and the weekend is never far behind!