Random Banter

 I'm back! Well I've been back but I've not been doing any writing.  This is usually how things go for me with writing.  I'll really be on it and then nothing...for months...even a year plus in this case.  And honestly there's no excuse for it! So my last post was from the middle of October 2024.  After I did my sub 2 hour half marathon. I'll try and catch you up.    At the end of 2024 I did a little bit of running trying to keep up with my fitness from the half marathon but I had lost the desire.  I still did a few bits of running here and there but just was not into it as much.  It could have been because I was no longer being coached or it might have been that my thyroid was super stressed at this point.  I'm not sure but I was definitely not running as much as I had been previously.  Enter 2025.   The first few months were a continuation of the last part of 2024 and then April came.  It was at this point that my b...

  Monday - Easy run on the treadmill.  Wanted to do strides at the end but my hip was bugging me so I just did 1 and shut it down.  Tuesday - Nothing.  Was dead tired on Monday night so skipped Tuesday.  Wednesday - Workout.  Wasn't sure if the hip would hold up but it did.  Not really sure why but it felt fine.  Ended up doing 1 minute fast, 1 minute recover 6 times.  Paces were from 8:40 to 7:46.  They felt appropriate.  I didn't really look at my watch and just did them as I thought a 5K - 10K would feel! Thursday - Uphill treadmill walking for 20 minutes and some various weights/bodyweight stuff for another 20 minutes.   Friday - Easy run on the treadmill with some strides.  Saturday - Long run.  76 minutes total with some steady time at the end to finish.   I'm a bit late posting this so I know some things that I wouldn't have normally posted if I'd posted this when I wanted to! Right now it doe...

 It's been awhile since I've posted here, for just myself, but I thought I'd go ahead and get this down as it will help with my thought process as I move through this off season.   But first lets look back on this season.  This was probably our most successful season.  The biggest takeaway was the half marathon PR of 1:59.04 in late September.  I'd like to say that I knocked off some stuff in regards to the 5K distance but it just didn't happen (only 1 5K race!).  I'm fairly certain that it would go down right now, without a lot of specific training, but we will leave it as it is.  I also set a new PR in the 8 mile Antelope Trail race distance.  Just by a few seconds but a PR is a PR and I'll take it. For whatever reason that course always gets me! And now we begin the off season.  No races have been thought about or planned so I'm considering this the start of my off season and my big goal for this next year is to just get faster. And t...

 The last race I did was a half marathon at the end of March and for my speed it was more of a shuffle than anything. This was my first race since then and with my coach.   The couple of weeks prior to this race we had backed off of the long runs and did some specific running focused on the 5K speed.  I had dreams of setting a new 5K PR at this elevation (I set a 5K PR at a much lower elevation that I hope to break some day!).  In order to set a 5K PR I needed to average a mile pace of something like 8:15 or less.  I was optimistic to start with but after a workout or two of trying to hold that pace I knew it wasn't in the books.  So I re-adjusted and just wanted to beat my time from the previous year (27:10).   It was kind of odd because the race was on Thursday rather than a Saturday when most races are held. But it is what it is.  The weather turned out to be pretty good because we had been having some high temperature's leading into ...

 As is usual I'm really only writing this for myself but I do enjoy writing, it provides and outlet, so I'm gonna put down a few thoughts.  My half marathon on March 24th went better than expected, finish time of 2:26:50, which is better than the previous one I had done.  Despite doing the majority of that training on the treadmill I'm pretty happy with that.  I do plan on getting another one one the list, for the fall, and will hopefully getting close to 2 hours.  I'd love to go sub 2 but we will see.  Along those lines I have hired a coach to see if they can help me go to the next level.  For the past few years, in my mind, I have been stuck at this level.  Just never able to take the next step to more volume and getting faster.  This coaches philosophy is a lot of very low intensity training with one really hard day thrown in.  So I'm running slower than I was previously most of the time but there is one really hard day...or we will g...

 It's been awhile but I wanted to get this out more for myself than anything.  This Sunday the 24th is my half marathon.  Starting off the year with this race.  I'm not considering it an A race by any stretch of the imagination.  It was more of a race that I was using to keep active through the winter.   On reflection I'm not sure it was the best idea.  My time might have been better spent doing some training and maybe pushing things a little more.  However I did run the longest I've run in a couple of years which I think is needed.  Having said that I didn't do anything that got me close to a half marathon distance. So Sunday will be interesting to see how it goes.   My goal is to try and run somewhere around 12:30 to 12 minute miles.  The one thing I have going for me is that this race is at a slightly lower elevation but not much. I'm fairly confident in this because on my last long run outside I was just just running f...