Wow! So Much Blog, Many Run!

So I have done an amazing job staying current with my blog, even my wife has been putting on the pressure! So here goes a recap of the last week. (wait... I can barely remember anything I did)

Monday - Friday. Four runs on the dreadmill at work. They were usually 6-8 mile runs at easy paces. Although, even easy paces on the treadmill just don't have that soft fuzzy feeling of running outside. As there are limited TVs in the gym at work, I am usually at the mercy of a more senior employee's preference until they are done... So I typically am force fed some politically charged news station I don't care for or endless sports highlights.

Note for myself, I really need to re-start my stretching routines again, my legs ache!

Also, random photo of my offspring from last week!

Saturday: Group "Farewell Run" for Erin (Running Ruminations) ~ 12.5 miles (for me)

This run was probably the funnest run I've done in awhile.  The weather was chilly and snowing.. a lot! There was no expectation of pace or time we were trying to hit. It was relaxing and slightly challenging as I haven't done much running outside lately nor run double digit miles in over a month. Our group kept growing in size and I got to met several new people... and did I mention I PR'd in high fives?

I GOT 70!!

I won't forget the run or the people! I hope to have more weather gifted fun runs in the future!

Sunday: Recovery run. I meant to just go 6-7 miles or 1 hour. And again, I forgot to look ahead of time where I should turn around and ended up going about 7.5 miles.  If you asked me, I would say I was doing about 9 minute + miles, but turns out it was about 8:15.. So not as slow as I wanted.

Going for a run.. or mug someone... or both

 Looking back, I've amped up my miles a little faster than I wanted and hit 50 miles last week.. Keep me out of injury jail people! I'm going to try to tone it down a little this week.

Monday: Pint Night at Fleet Feet in Lincoln Square. Total miles about 6.5.

Details: Most of it is being censored out for this blog. But we had a lot of fun, and our ability to consume more wurst jokes looked like this:

FIN

Picking it up for the Holidays

I had the pleasure to experience three very different types of run, each providing me their own challenges, but in the end I love every bit of it.

Friday: Dreadmill. 8 miles. 1.5miles warm up at 8:30 pace, 5 miles between 6:40 - 7:04 pace, 1.5 cool down. I wanted to give myself a small test of my breathing capabilities, how my legs were really doing after a rest day, and a little bit of mental confidence that I am on the right road to redemption and not perdition.

Saturday: First run back on the Lakefront Path! I got out around 5:40am. My plan was to do a slow recovery run after my first push on my legs on Friday. I figured 6-7 miles or an hour at a slow pace would be fine. It was a chilly one, I think the windchill was around -1 and the temperature was somewhere between 8 to 11. I dressed warm... a tad too warm.

I had a pretty pleasant run, I saw some normies I had seen many times before, a total of 8 people, they all said hello. My legs were very tired, but I was in no rush. I looked at my watch to turn around at the 30 minute mark, as I couldn't remember my current mile markers from my new place of resident. Once I got home, I saw that I had messed with my stopwatch and pressed the wrong button. I ended up running about 8 and a half miles, woops.

Saturday evening, I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo with some friends from out of town, it was a very frigid evening! Here are some photos, we had fun!

Sunday: First double digit run, about 10 and a half miles. Mid 20s, windier than Saturday, and snowed for half my run. My legs were not very pleased to be huffing around. I had no push to my run, I was pretty sore and just couldn't pick up my pace to my normal long run pace. The wind was giving me a bit of extra discomfort to my deeper breathing, so at my turn around point, I stopped for a puff of my inhaler to play it safe and returned home on my merry way with snow gracing my face.

Sunday Evening I got to visit a galaxy far far away with some fine friends of mine and some six sided die.

What do runners do when they aren't running?

We role play....

Many of you may be saying:

And rightfully so! It was a fun experience I hope we build upon, we have a filthy crew playing out the adventures we could only hope to do.

Although, my first adventure wasn't very fruitful, as all my "rolls" were pretty much as useful as this:

Fun times! I hope you all had a great weekend! What were you up to? Are you in the holiday spirit yet?

Returning to the Season

Hello Everyone!

Trying to get back on some more regular blogging and blog reading, so here's a post for you!

I think I last left you (I’m too lazy to look at my last post right now) with the hopeful news of improving health and a return to running!

The Flovent inhaler (why is this so expensive?!) I was given is supposed to take one to two weeks to start working. Monday (2 December) I started feeling some feeling of normalcy return to my breathing that I haven’t had since…. the first half of the Chicago Marathon.

Small tangent here, looking back to my first marathon experience, I feel robbed a little bit. 

This isn’t to take away how amazing the experience, community, and journey was, but to reflect on no matter how much you prepare for an event, life can throw you an obstruction that you can do little more than just trudge through.  I feel a little frustrated that even with the awesome pacing by Annabelle at Fluency’s Folly provided, months of training, and months of rehab to work through an injury, I could do absolutely nothing to work through the mid race asthma.  I know the finish time is just a number, but I now know it was not the number I deserved.  Next time…

Okay, back to this week. If you follow my on Twitter or Runkeeper, you may have seen I started running again.  The only order from my doctor is to take two puffs Albuterol 15 minutes before cardiovascular exercise.  I also was waiting until I felt normal throughout my normal activities and didn’t get any chest tightening or other warning signs for my breathing.

I decided to do my first few runs on the treadmill at work to isolate the amount of variables in my run (such as cold air possibly making the asthmas worse) and be in a safe environment in case I did have some incident. 

Kudos to those of you that log a lot of miles on treadmills and live to blog about it. Jeannie has done a good job with it during her interstellar cruises, but I just can’t really enjoy the runs on the treadmill.  TV and music are like taking a low dose of Advil for an injury that requires a Morphine drop for me. 

Monday: 5 miles, easy pace. My legs were really stiff and my breathing was getting a bit fatigued at the end, but nothing I was worried about.

Tuesday: 6 miles, easy pace. I was very sore and stiff again.  Calling me inactive over the last few weeks would be a compliment to my activity level. I keep hoping my legs wake up after this week. In the evening, I finally start to feel full functioning again with that running blood starting to pump through me again.

Just a tad dramatic

Wednesday: 7 miles, 1.5 warm up, 4 at long run pace, 1.5 miles cool down. Hey, it’s a start!

Thursday: Running rest day. 

Notes: I HATE the sharp static shock I get on the treadmill if I ever touch the bar in front of me. 

I also am doing the runs during my lunch hour, which limits the amount of time I have to run, try to stretch for a few minutes after, and shower. 7-8 miles is going to be my max here, which leads me to start re-planning my running future. I’ll rehash it out later, but I still want my lunch hour to do more core and weight focused routines.

This weekend I hope to get my first test of cold weather running mixed with asthma, but I'm excited to get back outside.

Non Running Stuff:

You know what grinds my gears at work?

Grinches that take holiday candy and chocolate like the deserve it. The secretaries in my area have put out a variety of holiday chocolate minis and those bowls of chocolate get raided very quickly. I’m not okay with this. I decorate my pod at work like it belongs in a holiday movie. I bring in holiday chocolates as well, but this year, I’m not letting just anyone have a piece, not even the tip.

Past seasons, I just put the candy close to me or out of reach for those sneaky swipers.

This would make people have to at least risk acknowledging me to get the tip of the diabetes treat. 

This season, it may by the season of giving, but you need to give me back some holiday cheer! In my section of the office, there are about 40ish people. Only 3-4 people (including me) put up any decorations. Everyone else? HUMBUGlers!

Now I understand a lot of people just aren’t into it, okay, but if you want free holiday chocolates (Snickers, Yorks, Reeses, M&Ms, Hershey’s), You have to pay into this chocolate return with cheer, this isn’t the chocolate welfare office. Will my test succeed? I’ll let you know. If it doesn’t, I’ll take the candy home and bring it for more deserving people!

That should be more than enough content for a few days. 

Tell me how you have been? I'm so behind on blogs. Give me your recent highlights that I should know!