week three (a/k/a a weak week).

I managed three decent (though short) workouts early in the week, but my GPS conking-out just before the very end of the last of these may have been foreshadowing that the remaining days would get away from me.

Bad weather, a towering task list at work, the arrival of a headcold, a death in the family and poor nights of sleep as a result combined to convince my legs (and my mind) that they were tired. 

Somewhere during the week I read an interesting article addressing overreaching vs. overtraining.  In an attempt to remain positive, I can at least reflect on the week knowing that if I'd been guilty of either (my pace did seem to be dragging as of late), the last few days should've been some relief.

Hopefully the week ahead will look very different than the one just passed.

Monday, January 17 - Cold run home from work - pace suffered from wind and the efforts of the weekend.

Tuesday, January 18 - Ran well where/when I was able, but ice and traffic-dodging made for a slow trip.

Wednesday, January 19 - Ran further than the Garmin attests - battery bonked somewhere in the last mile.



week one.

An innocent facebook status post (written about my last run of 2010) made me think that maybe I should make some effort to document my 2011 running efforts.  I've tried keeping running logs in the past but usually lost interest or tried to accomplish too much with them, noting all kinds of specific details I thought would help me improve my running but ended up just being noise.  This time around I'm going to try and keep things simple and, hopefully, remain interested while doing so.

Rather than charting performance or maintaining multi-columned spreadsheets, I'm just going to take a pic of the shoes I ran in, the face of my Garmin, the headlamp I was wearing during the run (if needed) and add a brief comment.  If I learn anything, great.  If I don't, at least it'll be interesting to see what shoes I turned to most often and be able to tally up the mileage.  So, here's week one of 2011 (plus the free-floating Saturday and Sunday to start the year that preceded the first full calendar week):



Saturday, January 1 - mid-day loop from home that included Power Road.

Sunday, January 2 - pre-dawn out-and-back on the Horseshoe starting at Colebrook Road and heading NW.

Tuesday, January 4 - pre-dawn start out-and-back on roads and the local rail-to-trail.

Tuesday, January 4 - post-work run home.

Thursday, January 6 - pre-dawn start round-about run to work to retrieve a vehicle and come back home.

Friday, January 7 - post-work Power Road hill repeats.

Saturday, January 8 - Horseshoe Trail off of 322, west of Brickerville.

This is a decent bit of mileage for me in the cold and darkness of January and a good continuation of where I was in December.  I hope to keep it up in the coming weeks and start building mileage late this month or early February to increase endurance ahead of Spring events.

My body feels good and all of my chilly fingers and toes are crossed.