Saturday, March 28, 2009

Update

I went for a very brief jog today to test out the knee to see if I would have any pain while running. I am happy to report that it did not hurt. YEAH!!!

Also, my friend Tato is going to be running the race with Steve and I. Should be fun!!!

My time to beat will be 54:01 as that is my PR time from the Bird Lover's run.

Chad

Friday, March 27, 2009

Upcoming Race - Austin Capitol 10k

On Sunday March 29th I have signed up to run in the Austin Capitol 10k race. I am running this race with a friend that I used to work with. He has run this race several times in the past several years and said that it is a fun race. According to its website it is the 5th largest 10k race in the country.

Over the last three weeks it has been pretty difficult to find the time to get out there and run and have only run 1 day a week. This week I started back in with regular running. When I started back this week I could defintely tell that I had lost a little bit of my fitness. I ran on Sunday and the run felt pretty good, but did feel a little tightness on my right hamstring.

I made it out to run again on Monday. From the getgo I could tell that I was still feeling the effects of the run on Monday as my legs were pretty stiff and a little sore. So I took it easy and ran 6 miles.

I took a break from running on Tuesday and worked out on the bowflex. I went out for a six mile run on Wednesday and everything felt pretty good UNTIL I finished. Almost immediately I noticed some soreness in my left knee. UGH!!! This was definitely not what I needed right before a race.

I took the dog for a two mile walk while I cooled down and there wasn't any pain while walking , but it returned when I stopped. I iced it for a while and went to bed. The next morning there was just a little bit of soreness, but it was not bad and today it felt normal.

I am planning on going for an easy run tonight or tomorrow to see how the knee is holds up. I am hoping that the soreness was only temporary and I want have any issues on Sunday.

Chad

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Running at Tyler State Park

As I previously wrote I had mapped out a running route while we were camping at State Park. There was a really nice loop that went around the camping area and the distance was just over three miles. I figured I could run the loop twice and have a god six mile run.

As I had also mentioned before the park had a lot of hills!!! I ended up going on one run while camping and that was only one loop around the park. The hills were HORRIBLE!!! I had to take pictures of the hills as we were leaving the campground so that you could share my pain.

This is the first hill that I came upon shortly after starting the run. This hill is going up (the picture almost makes it look like it is going down) and it is much steeper than it looks (at least that is my story - this is the equivalent to the fish that got away story for runners!!!)



And yes where there are uphills there are usually down hills. At this park they were very steep downhills and on some of them I had to keep myself from flying down the hills (or rolling down them. These next two pictures show two of the steep down hills that were on the loop.






The next three pictures are more of the uphills and down hills on this route. I think there were about 8 hills on the three mile loop around the park.

I had planned on running the loop again going the opposite direction to see how that way went, but I put it off so that we could take the girls on a hike, but we ended up packing up camp and going to Jill's brothers in Dallas because the weather was supposed to turn cold and wet. I think it ended up being a good call as it was pretty cold the next morning and there was a drizzle.

Overall we had a great time camping and plan to go on a couple of more trips in April.









May the Force be with you!!!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Spring Break Running

This week we are on Spring Break with the kids and are staying at Tyler State Park in northeast TX. I have not run for the last several days as Friday night I was packing to leave for camping on Saturday. On Saturday we drove all day (7 hours) and then had to set up camp. On Sunday, I scoped out the park to determine a running route and I that the park road is a three mile loop. The bad part is that there are massive massive hills. They have really really long hills and they have really really steep hills.

I think that I will try and run this three mile loop tomorrow morning. I am afarid that I will only be able to do it once.

May the Force be with me tomorrow.

Chad