Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

I was going to run longer, but my left ankle still hasn't recovered from Saturday, so I settled for a mellow thirty minutes. I was surprised, actually--not that I was still hurting from this weekend, but that the pain was on the left leg. I was sure my right foot would be downfall, if anything. 

I decided to try one of the programmed treadmill workouts tonight, and it was pretty cool. Basically, I spent 30 minutes at 10:00/mile while the treadmill undulated from 9 percent to 15 percent with lots of stops in between. Never easy enough to really recover, but never hard enough that my life flashed before my eyes. I'll probably do it again. 

More easy miles on the treadmill--45 minutes this time. My left leg still hurts a bit, but it's getting better so who cares. Really, there's not much to say about my run tonight. But how about that Duke game? What a finish. 

I wanted to run more, but my left leg still hurts, so I decided that the wise thing to was to stop before things get worse. I still ran the extra 0.1 to even out my mileage for the week, though. 

Anyway, other than the distance, my run was as planned. Alternating between half miles at 9:15 and quarter miles at 5:20. I figure that if I'm running the intervals fast, I may as well keep the recover very slow. Especially since I haven't run fast for a long time. 

Three reasons I chose to push the stroller rather than putting in an honest 5K effort:

1. Elliott needed a new PR
2. My leg still hurts and I don't want to make things worse
3. I'm an out of shape wimp and I don't want to push myself 

Some reasons are better than others, but they are what they are. Ultimately, I'm happy with my decision to run the race with Catherine and Elliott, as the family approach is much more enjoyable and there's no way I was going to PR (or come close) even if I tried. I'm absolutely certain I would have taken second overall, though, so I would have won a giant Valentine teddy bear. I can live with that sacrifice. 

The race was fun. It's hard to maneuver through a large starting crowd with a stroller, but Elliott and I managed and we caught up with Catherine after a quarter mile or so. From there on the crowd was pretty thin, so we had no trouble. Elliott got cranky a couple of times, probably because she wanted me to go faster (or maybe because here face was cold), but she was in good enough spirits at the finish line to pop a wheelie as she crossed, almost taking Catherine out in the process (sorry, Catherine). We finished in 23:07, a huge PR for Elliott (her first race was 26:44), and Catherine's fastest since the baby. 

In the evening I made it out for another run at the gym. I was at the Gold's in Orem, so I decided to take advantage of the mega-incline treadmills. After a twenty minute jog, I cranked it up to 24 percent and hiked at about 20:00/mile for forty minutes, with the last four or five at 30 percent. According to the computer I climbed a little more than 1900 feet. I didn't feel great, but that's life.

Also, Sprint may have just proven itself at least as dirty and underhanded as our last wireless provider. Sigh. If anyone's interested in buying a two-month-old Galaxy S2, let me know.