Step by step, mile by mile

AM - early morning stationary and dynamics

AM2 - 7 on sokol, 6:01 pace. calf felt okay

PM - 5 on sokol in the early afternoon, 5:46 pace lol. calf felt better than this morning. very very windy.

AM - 5 on the treadmill, about 6:40 pace. probably only getting treadmill mileage until friday morning at the earliest. when it rains it pours

AM2 - core, upper body, and extension rotational lunges. nothing special, outside my ego taking a hit as i did dumbbell shoulder presses with a petite girl beside me doing the same exercise but with significantly heavier weights. honestly, it was more of a testament to her strength than my lack thereof.

AM - 3 on hilton, 5:53 pace. very short window to run today

AM - about 5, no watch. ran from my apartment down to hilton, did a lap there, ran to the nearby mall and ran a lap around the lot, then ran back. for low 20's at 5am, didn't feel that cold. felt like i'd jammed my ankle/foot near the end, no doubt from the asphalt/concrete running. with all the rain it was either this or the treadmill

AM - 5 on sokol, 6:13 pace. even for being a little out of shape, 6:13 felt as easy as it ever has. unfortunately, i landed a bit unevenly running up a grass hill early into mile 3 and my calf felt a little off afterward so stopped shorter than i'd have like to. 

PM - 5 on sokol, 5:58 pace. knee was feeling a bit stiff so decided after a bit it was gonna just be a light run, no workout. the first two or so miles when i was still debating it i was forcing myself to take it easy enough to call it warmup effort, and my HR kept beeping that it was too low to affirm it as such, but i was still running around 6-flat pace. lol.

AM - 11 on sandy, 6:34 pace. easy. knee needed a break from all the laps and loops so took the drive up for an out-and-back.

AM - sandy again for some hill work. started with 4 miles down sandy up to oakmulgee, 5:53 pace. around the usual aerobic run effort, not approaching anywhere near tempo effort. call it a hard warmup. once that was done i'd finished at a hill i've done repeats up a few times before, probably more than anywhere else in bama. i know at some point i gave it the namesake of an ex but i forget which one. wanna say "jamajah". hill is about 350m, did it 11 times with jogging back down for recovery. didn't bother tracking it because i know how my brain works and i knew i'd run the first one too fast and then kill myself trying to match the split for every other repeat. i also know this because every other time i've done repeats on this hill it ended after like 5 max because i did exactly that lol. jogged back to the car for 13.

AM - 5 on hilton, 6:03 pace. came probably 2000 calories short of accounting for what i burned yesterday, and it showed in a pretty lifeless run early this morning. also dropped about 5 pounds off the scale since sunday to get back to my standard training weight. if the cost was a recovery run stopped about a half-hour short, so be it.

AM - 8 on sandy, 6:11 pace. first 3 in 17:20.

AM - 5 on mural right at 5am. forgot my watch.

AM - turf and 5 on mural, 6:28 pace. started off too fast but decided to ride it out for a mile(5:39) then take the rest extra easy. very wintry morning; low 20's and viciously windy.

PM - 5 on mural, 5:53 pace. a little much. still windy.

AM - 5 on hilton early. no watch but felt like a decent clip, probably around 6:15 pace. about as cold as yesterday morning sans the wind

AM - 5 easy on hilton. no watch

PM - 11 on sandy just past noon, 6:24 pace. ran the first 2 miles in 11:38, bad idea as by mile 11 i was totally gassed. mid 70's out! have to appreciate it, especially when you realize it's the harbinger of us getting violated by storms the next couple of days

AM - 5 on mural at 3am, 6:29 pace. would have liked to go longer but my legs weren't completely recovered from the afternoon run yesterday. wager if i hadn't gone out kamikaze-style i'd have bounced back enough, but alas. very windy for being so early, but it was somehow over 60 out in the middle of the winter night so i'll take it i guess.

AM - 9 on sandy, 6:55 pace. after my morning run last thursday my left calf started seizing up in brief spurts, and i was shook enough over it to take the next 3 days off. meant to pick it back up sunday or monday, but we got a ton of rain and my calves act up easy with treadmill/asphalt running so i didn't want to start back up until i could run on grass or trails. trails were extremely muddy but i'm not complaining. i know 5 days off isn't enough to really lose fitness but man i felt out of shape. didn't eat much the last few days so the fact that i was starving most of the run probably wasn't helping either. 

AM - 8 on arrowhead, 6:28 pace. new route! woke up to the sound of heavy rain hitting the window, as it had been all night. that meant most of my normal options were out, even sandy was probably too flooded for me drive up. decided to try a trailhead i'd noticed a few days ago, but ended up being an asphalt riverwalk that ended maybe 600m past the parking lot. however! once at the turnaround i noticed a gravel maintenance road heading farther down, so hoped on that. after about a minute the trail dipped for about 30m, with the entire stretch now rushing with deep, dirty water from farther up. after taking a couple of minutes to debate, decided to hop across/run through the gully and continue down the trail to see how far it went.

after about 3 miles of mostly running through secluded nature(with another couple of gullies to skip through), i got to a sign saying something like "armed guards monitoring past this point", which got me excited as i've been going down a conspiracy theory/supernatural rabbit hole the last couple weeks and was hoping i'd stumble across something that'd scar me for life. a little farther down the path ended at a tall barbed wire fence surrounding a small building. nobody around, which considering my entire lower half was covered in mud just to get to there, maybe not a huge surprise. still, wasn't gonna hop the fence to entertain my curiosity... not today at least

overall, very cool new route. definitely going to add it to the rotation. would have been an even better run had i not been doing so much puddle-hopping and the like, but, eh.

noon - 5 on arrowhead, 6:14 pace

AM - 6 on arrowhead, 6:17 pace

6 on arrowhead, 6:14 pace

5 on arrowhead, 6:03 pace