cheryl

Ok, now that I'm going to be more consistently running, I'm going to more consistently blog.  Today the group met at Centennial Park in Riverton.  We warmed up together for a little ways, then we broke up into two groups, the ones wanting to do real speed, and the others who wanted to ease into speed.  I chose the ease into speed group.  We ran for a while, then threw in some faster pick-ups.  We made it back to the park, then ran the loop again, this time just running, no faster pick-ups.  I was running along, enjoying talking with Michelle and Kelli, then here comes Eric running fast, so I took up with him and we pushed it back to the park.  It was kind of fun to kind of open things up.

Because my main goal now is to get my form "smoother and more efficient," I think I'm going to give myself a grade on that each time.  When I first start out running, things feel tight and not very smooth and efficient.  But as I warm up, things get better.  Today I concentrated on keeping my upper body relaxed.  That is a constant struggle because I've programmed myself over years to be way too tight there.  I would give myself a B for that, not as tight as I've been lately, but it still needs work.  I also worked on the feeling of gliding back on the "kick-back" part of the stride.   It felt better as the run went along, and by the end was actually pretty good.  Higher knees still needs work.  Overall a B for form for today's run.

Today I did a rolling hill workout on the treadmill.  I changed the incline throughout, going up to 12% at times, then down to a decline, then back up to whatever incline I felt like.  I read in Running Times that some coach out there thinks rolling hills are the best workout for marathon runners, so that's what gave me the idea to do what I did today.  I kept the speed very slow, it was overall a good run, not too demanding.

Today the group met at Julie's house.  It was raining a little when I left my house at 5:30.  I was tempted to just drive to the Rec Center and do a workout there, but I knew I wouldn't get as good of a workout as I get with the group, nor would it be nearly as much fun, so I drove on and met the group.  I made the right decision, the weather was very nice, if it was raining at all, it wasn't very much.  After the warm-up, I ran in shorts and a t-shirt and was very comfortable.  We ran three miles for the main workout.  Cheris said she was going to take the first mile fast, the second slower, the third fast, so I decided to do that.  My times were:  7:32, 8:09, and 7:20 for the three miles.  I was pretty happy with those times, because I haven't really done any big time running for a couple of months, so to have two miles in the 7 minute range I thought was pretty good.  Now if I could just get my times closer to 7 minutes flat, I would be quite happy because that would show real progress.  It was fun, I felt pretty good, felt like my form was good, the relaxation part is going better, plus the working on the extension feeling more like gliding felt pretty good today, after the warm-up.  Things are always very tight at first, then I loosen up as we go along.

I got up early for Lisa's class at the Rec Center.  I really wanted to stay in bed, but that's what I did last week, and I felt bad all day about doing that.  Once I got to the Rec Center, I'm glad my less lazy side won.  The class was fun, as always.  I like that we do things I normally don't do, always feel like it's a good workout.  Later I ran for 15 minutes barefoot on my treadmill.  I kept the speed slow and enjoyed it.

I was having a delivery of appliances sometime between 8 and 12 today, so I thought I would meet some group members at 7:00 and run for about an hour, then go home and wait for the delivery.  We met at Dean's house, I ran  5 miles, made it home at 7:57, found out the delivery came at 7:30 but they couldn't set anything up because I wasn't there, so called them back up and they came back and took care of everything.  Why do they say between 8 and 12 and then come at 7:30?  Later I put in a few more easy miles on the treadmill.