I Run

OK, it's time to start wasting copious amounts of time looking for upcoming races on coolrunning.com, nerunner.com, runningintheusa.com, etc... Hey, I found one in Keene: the Ashuelot River 5.6K on 4/14! The course is on a trail I've run many times just across from the building where I work. A look at the results from last year shows that there were some very fast people running this race, including at least one woman who is a world class marathon runner. It's an out-and-back course so I figure it might be a bit tricky on some of the narrow parts of the trail when doubling back.

I was reading an article in Runner's World that indicated the benefit of increasing one's stride rate to about 180 strides/minute. Apparently, most elite runners fall into this stride range. So on my Sunday run up Sweet Pond Rd. and back, I periodically counted my strides per minute to get up to this range. It didn't take too much more effort to increase it - normally I would do about 160/minute - and if I back off the stride length just a bit my pace remains the same. My legs are bit more sore, but that could partly be due to the fact that I didn't run for 5 days before the weekend runs.

Really.  It's just been too cold.  So I haven't run since I did 14 miles on Sunday.  The cold never used to bother me (another sign of aging). And I just don't want to deal with the hassle of putting on so many layers of clothing.  The forecast for the coming week calls for much warmer temperatures, so I'll get out there.

It's interesting how my perception of long distance changes when I'm not training for a marathon. Today I went around the block, which felt like a marathon by the end even though it was 13 or 14 miles total for the day (I took a couple of little detours). When I'm training I would consider 13 miles a short run. Today it was a long run. I even took a little nap in the afternoon, which I hardly ever do.

That doesn't mean I'm an atheist (though I suppose my views on religion and spirituality could be fodder for an entirely different blog). Anyway, I ran home from the Guilford Community Church today, which is about 6.5 miles. My pace was very relaxed since I'm planning do a longer run tomorrow and I didn't want to have to recover from today's run.