It didn’t really hit me until I looked at the date of my
last post. May 21st – that was
two and a half months ago! To be fair, I
haven’t simply just been neglecting to do any blog writing (as I normally do
with such a long interval between posts).
Life has been in a bit of transition lately, with some fun thrown in there
as well.
Life’s pieces began to move in June when my wife defended
her doctoral thesis and was awarded her PhD.
A week later I left my job, and a week after that we went on a two and a
half week vacation to Ireland. Upon
returning home to Madison in the second week of July, my wife and I then had to
start packing to move to the Twin Cities (the twin cities of Minneapolis / St. Paul
to be specific) as she had found a job that would be starting in August. So after being in Madison for just a few
days, we found ourselves on a Friday morning helping the packing/moving company
load all of our belongings into the back half of a semi-trailer. Then again bright and early Monday morning we
found ourselves, again with our friends from the moving company, unloading our
possessions into our new place. Although
we only moved a few hours up Interstate 94 and only a state away, it’s taken a
few weeks to get adjusted to the new place.
Most pertinent to this blog though is that I have started
running again. My running shape took
quite a hit with moving and the trip to Ireland. I was off of running for exactly a month as my
last run before Ireland and moving was June 19th and my first run at
the new place was July 19th.
Although we did do a great bit of walking/hiking in Ireland, I wasn’t
running and my pace now is considerably slower.
As an example, in my last 2-mile run in June I was able to do at a mile
pace of 7 minutes flat. Here at our new
place, my first 2-miler (well my first one where I didn’t get lost on the local
park’s trails) was at a mile pace of 8 ½ minutes. Now more or less back into the swing of running
though, my pace has come down. The mile
splits for today’s 2-miler were at 7:41.
One thing that isn’t helping my times is the fact that there
are big hills everywhere here. Madison
by no means was flat, but where we are in the Twin Cities there is literally no
flat ground anywhere. Don’t get me
wrong, I love that I’m next to a park with a picturesque lake with lots of
running trails. However, because we’re
right by a lake, we live in a valley and every running route starts with a huge
hill. Oh well. I maybe won’t have to do as many hill repeats
as I did in Madison.
Besides the hills, I purposely implemented another
change. This past spring I was running 4
days a week. As I have more time due to
the fact that have not yet found a new job (and am just playing “house husby”
as my wife calls it), I have changed my schedule to run 5 days a week. I have the time to do it so I thought why
not. It should also bring my running
times down a bit faster and more importantly get me back into my previous
running shape a bit faster too. I have
to be careful not to add on too many miles too quickly though. The twinges I felt in my shins earlier this
week definitely reminded me of that.
Still if I can restore my speed before the end of summer, then I can
maybe do a few fall 5Ks before the snow starts to fly… which unfortunately will
now be earlier in the year being further north.
Let’s not think about that now though.
Let’s enjoy the 90 degree temps and 80% humidity while we have it. Wait…
1 comment:
Good to have you back, and congrats to Joan on the job!
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