Running Partner

So a friend of mine wants to stay in shape with a little running. We are going to become running buddies for a while. He is in really good shape which makes me a little nervous. He has been doing cage fighting and is just looking for something to stay in shape. We are going to start on Monday. I have been needing to get into shape again cause I have a fitness test coming up really soon for work.

I will let you know how it goes!

Trial Run

So I waited as long as I could. I was shocked during the last race, that my legs didn't hurt. So I decided to go for a trial run. I put on my shoes, shorts, and running shirt, grabbed my phone where I use audible and a cardiotrainer app to motivate and distract myself, and headed to the levee.

I have been looking at the levee every day on my way to and from work and I really wanted to try running along it cause it looks like a nice run with some pretty scenery from the main road. When I got there, I had to park in a relatively unsavory area, just off the street. I reminded myself not to judge a spot by it's thoroughfare, and thought that by the time I got on the trail, it would clean right up and I would have a pleasant run. I was wrong.

I knew that the river is where a lot of the homeless from Yuba City make their homes. But I guess I didn't know what to expect a homeless persons home to look like, or maybe I thought there would be fewer of them. There were quite a few areas (no less than half a dozen in about a mile and a half) where there was a shopping cart pushed into a thicket of trees with a surprising amount of trash strewn about them. I am sure that to the person that resides next to the shopping cart, this stuff is not trash and I imagine I would run into trouble if I got to close to one of these. This was kind of disappointing, cause I wanted to run on the trails that I see winding along the river. But I guess in order for there to be little foot trails, there has to be foot traffic and the people who live down there surely have to walk to the...wherever they go to get their food and booze. Of course, living by the river has to have it's advantages. In the summer, the water would offer refreshment and slightly cooler air. There would always be plenty of drinking water. And there is plenty of vegetation for a person to hide there possessions in, or make a home out of. But the scene yesterday was also depressing because it is spring, which means a lot of rainfall in Northern California. And that rain has raised the river on no less than three occasions. Which soggifys the homeless home, and in some cases washes them away completely, or partially. I couldn't stop thinking about all of this as I ran along. And I passed quite a few people who were walking to or from their homes along the run.

Besides the unsavory characters, I noticed about a mile into the run that my low back was starting to cramp up with fatigue. I ran/walked the rest of the way and had to stop several times to stretch my back before continuing. I will run again, probably next week, but it is not likely to be along the same route. I will have to map out a trail in the neighborhood for my ambles.

Uggh, Injuries

Nothing says spring like a few injuries from pushing too hard. I have what I can only guess are stress fractures in my shins and ankles. When I am walking there is virtually no pain, but when I pick it up to a run I get a pretty intense pain along my shin bones and into my ankles. Naturally, I am unhappy about this and since I have a 1.5 mile race on the 7th I am Really not happy about it. I am going to get through that one and then see about taking a 6-8 week break. Wish me luck!

Apparently I am a Clydesdale

So there is a name for big runners, and that name is "clydesdale." I found this out looking through some of the runners blogs. At first I thought that this kind of sucked, but I am coming to embrace it.

I went to the physical therapist this afternoon and the doc gave me some stretches and exercises that I can use to get this back problem situated. The funny part is that all of the exercises and stretches I already do in yoga...or I do occasionally, and apparently need to do a lot more.

So I have started to increase my Yoga and decrease my running for a while. I also did spin class and some strength training. All of this as part of my plan to get back in shape for the summer. Oh yeah, and to be in shape for the birth of our first child. Cause I wanna be able to keep up. Tomorrow Jessi and I learn the sex of our baby! woohoo!

Disaster

I have been laid up for a while with some pretty intense back pain. But thanks to a real good massage on Saturday and a trip to the chiropractor today, I am feeling much better and should be able to hit the road again in a couple of days! I can't wait! There is just one little problem. I am going to the Doc's on Wednesday to have them look at my back and my shins. Hopefully nothing is wrong, but I have had some pretty consistant pain in my legs after every run. I hope I don't have to take too much time off.

A beginners struggle

I started running, relatively seriously, about a year ago. At first I was only able to do a half-walk half-run sort of thing. I did this for about six weeks slowly increasing the ratio of run to walk until I was able to run for a half of an hour. The first time that I did it I felt awesome, the way I imagine it feels to be at the top of Mt. Everest, exhausted, in pain, relieved and ecstatic all together. I kept running for a couple of months just concerning myself with being able to be out there for a half an hour at a time.

As will happen with anything, this feeling slowly faded and pretty soon I was dreading my run and trying to find any excuse I could come up with not to do it. It is amazing how important cleaning the cat box can become when you are stalling.

I talked for months about signing up for a 5K so that I would have a goal to work towards. But I never got around to it. I got to the website. I got the registration form information all filled in, but I could not bring myself to actually push the "register" button. Luckily I have a wife who knows me well enough to know when I am too scared, so for my birthday last year, she signed me up for a 5K and told me that I had six weeks to prepare. I was terrified. I had never even worried about mileage. I was a half-hour runner, nothing more. I needed to get myself into the mindset of working on miles and I needed to do it quickly.

I figured out that I was running about 2 miles in the half-hour, sometimes more and sometimes less. But the average was about two. I knew that I needed to increase my mileage, but I had no idea how. One would think that to run farther, you simply run farther but after I had hurt my toe, which is surprisingly debilitating, I didn't want to take any chances. I went to my old stand-by "Runner's World" website and found a way for me to increase my mileage safely. I started working on this new program and started to notice a pretty big difference in the amount of miles that I was able to run, as well as the speed that I was able to do them in.

I made it to the day of my first 5K. It was a local, "Run to feed the Hungry" race and I was all nerves and excitement. The gun went off and I started running. There were a lot of learning points that I will tell about in another post, but I finished in a respectable 29 minutes and was very pleased with myself. and very happy with my new shirt! The camaraderie of the race and the feeling of accomplishment was awesome. I loved being around people who were all of the same mindset, if only for an hour. And I started looking for my next race, I was hooked!