Just a quick post today to give a bit of a status update on things now that the Lemming Loop is done for another year. Plus today marks 13 weeks until the Walt Disney World Marathon that I will be doing as part of my 6th Goofy Challenge (or 5th plus one Dopey Challenge depending on how you want to do the math) and I wanted to mention some things about my training plans there.
The day after the Lemming Loop (Sunday) was pretty good – unseasonably warm and I spent quite a bit of time with the family in the pool and relaxing. My legs were feeling pretty good except my right ankle.
Monday – back to work and of my small group I was the only one in and I was rushing around fixing issues between meetings. The legs felt great and I was moving very well. The only issues came after I had to sit for a period of time in various meetings. My leg joints would get very stiff. But otherwise I felt really good.
Tuesday / Wednesday – lots of sitting at work and my legs were feeling that for sure. I also started sneezing regularly and had a running nose. Yay! That cold / flu hit pretty hard as I ended up going to bed early, getting about 8 hours sleep, getting up to feed the dogs and then laying down and going back to sleep after I sent an email to my manager letting him and my team know I wasn’t making it in. I then crashed for another 7-8 hours where I was completely oblivious to the world. It took everything to move to the couch from bed and then I still ended up falling asleep on the couch later. Rough.
Thursday – back to work again. I was still feeling wonky but didn’t want to miss any more work. (plus I had called a couple meetings that I didn’t want to have to reschedule). Felt ok through the day but was definitely light headed. After work we had swimming lessons for the kids and by the time that was done and we had supper it was too late to run.
Friday – busy work day but I was feeling ok and made it through. I did a couple easy treadmill miles after supper and felt a bit woozy by the end. I don’t think this was an after effect of the Lemming Loop but instead a bit of the cold/flu still in my system.
Saturday – 11th anniversary! Holy crap! No running today but did mow the lawn – last time for the season by the looks of things!
Sunday – cooler morning near freezing temps (interesting that we were able to swim just the previous Sunday!). After I fed the dogs I took them out for a run. With the cooler temps I figured I would be able to run the hairy buggers a bit longer. Well, after a quarter mile one of them started pulling up and sitting and laying down – he was done already. It is interesting – one of the dogs loves to run but will not play catch and the other is the opposite. So I took them home (total of 0.55 miles round trip) and left the catch player at home and ran with the runner. With the cooler temps he pulled off another 2 miles (which I think is the longest run I have had him out for) and still would give me the occasional tug on the leash to speed up. It was a nice feeling to run with someone/something that was genuinely excited and happy to get out and run! After I dropped him at home and went out for 4.45 miles on my own bringing my daily total to 7 miles. I felt good with no wooziness like I felt on Friday’s run so I think I am generally recovered from the Lemming Loop and the cold/flu. However I did have some aches in my right ankle for the last couple miles. This same ankle hurt during and after the Fort Garry Rotary half marathon a few weeks back and during the Lemming Loop as well. I will have to watch it and potentially use a support for a bit during training to make sure I don’t make it worse!
Coming up – Next Sunday is the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Services half marathon (WFPS Half Marathon) that both my wife and I are running. Not sure what to expect on that one but I am not counting on being sub 2 hours on that one. I will still shoot for it but I will understand if I don’t make it.
After that I will be dedicating my training to the Goofy Challenge in January and I am current finishing formulating my training plan for the next 13 weeks. It is going to be a bit different than previous plans as I have to move some of the days around a bit to work around the kids’s activities. I will be posting that up once I get it finalized.
Other news for the Goofy Challenge? Well, I have finalized my accommodations finally. I am using Disney Vacation Club points and most of the places I wanted to stay end up selling out at around the 11 month out window. But I did finally get something pretty decent set up after a month or so of trying. I will be spending the first night I am there (Thursday Jan 5th) in one hotel and the remaining nights in another. I was hoping to avoid bouncing hotels but at least I move on a day where I don’t have a race to do so it shouldn’t be bad.
Other thoughts – I have gotten away from writing up a quick blog post for each workout and instead just firing out a quick tweet with the info. I am going to try to get back into blogging each workout instead – the posts will still get tweeted but doing a post about the workouts makes me do a bit of an analysis on each run. This will help me focus more on what I am doing and catch issues faster but will also make me take ownership of each run which should help me become more engaged and dedicated to running again. Plus, I enjoy the writing aspect…and could definitely use the practice.
Anyway – this short post got pretty long but look for more posts in the near future.
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