Strawberry Fields

Wanted to share this scene from my Christmas-vacation running adventures. Awoke on a Sunday morning and headed out from our motel in Ventura. It was crisp, clear, and lovely! We were on the edge of town, right where agriculture (see above) meets urban encroachment (see below). After I haven't run for two straight days, as was the case on this day, I'm always pleased and amazed to find that my body takes to it like the proverbial duck to the proverbial H2O.
So now I'm home, it's January, and I'm easing into the preliminary marathon-training schedule I have penciled into my 2009 calendar. We're having a chilly (wintry!) winter, but I'm finding that if I jerk myself out the door before I'm fully awake that I'm pretty warm by the time I've run a mile or so and am coming to consciousness.

As part of my training (doing The Ave again this year, which falls on May 3), I'm working on overall strength and fitness. I find the easiest time to do this is when I'm dressed in workout clothes and already in motion--in other words when I'm on a run. Yesterday this meant that when I went to enter my run in my trusty running log, I had more non-running-related information to enter than stats from the actual run. Here's what I did:
  • 20 crunches
  • 40 bicycle kicks
  • 20 lurches on the parallel bars (I call them lurches for lack of a better name--I'm not going back and forth on the bars very well yet--stay tuned for progress reports)
  • 21 push-ups (7 each on the lowest, middle, and highest bars, which I stop at along the running path--I call them Baby Bear, Mama Bear, and Papa Bear. That Baby is a bear)
  • 3 runs along narrow, free-standing curbs--done for balance
In addition to these exercises, I do painful core "stuff" at the end of the run (plank! ugh!). Also, I'm working on making the runs themselves purposeful. Yesterday was "speed." The word has to stay in quotes for a while, until the day "speed" equates to anything resembling "fast." I guess it's all relative, really (chug, chug).

Tomorrow I'm running in SF around 5:30 with my friend and co-worker M, who is training for the LA Marathon, on March 1. We'll be in the dark, although the lights along the Embarcadero should help. Just trying to keep my running (and my life) a bit interesting.

Shalom, hip-hop hooray, keep breathing, and have a doggone nice day.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Fantastic, you are my sunshine... and inspiration. Training is full steam (rather than hot air)ahead.
10:36 AM
Bob said…
holy cats - that's a workout - i wanna be you when i grow up!
3:18 PM
Sunshine said…
Inspiring to read about your training .. and exciting to hear about your race plans!
Loved hearing from you.
11:11 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying to Make Lemonade

Image
What am I meant to learn from the challenges being thrown at me these days? That I am strong. That I am loved. That life goes on and can be good. My favorite nephew congratulated me for making lemonade when I'd been handed lemons--not sure his belief about me is justified, but I deeply appreciate the notion. Plus, I have an actual lemon tree in front of the house, so I've been practicing my tangy-beverage making. My ribs have healed up well. I'd say I'm at about 95%. I'm glad my minor medical matter is clearing up so I can turn my energy to a more major one: Z is scheduled for big-time surgery on March 31. He is calm; I am calm. Aaaaaaack! Oops, I meant of course I'm serene. The procedure he faces, which involves patching up some crucial circulatory parts, is a common one, and the success rate is high. But still. Send good vibes our way, if you'd be so kind. In other matters, I did run 10 miles Saturday. The run itself went well--I went down to the Bay Trai...
Read more

That Z Man

Image
Yesterday was Z's birthday, and I was thinking about how the story of us is at its heart a running story. About eleven and a half years ago, I was working the registration table at my running club's Fourth Sunday Run , and a guy came up to the table to register for the race. I asked him if he was a club member, and he said "No, but I'm going to change that right now," so I gave him a membership form to fill out. What happened after that is a story that has often been mis-told by others, but I'm here to give you the correct version--after all, I was there. I was running the 10K that week. The race started, and it wasn't long (maybe half a mile?) before I noticed that up ahead of me two of the club's most talented and winsome older women runners were schlepping along with the new guy (who was stylishly attired in purple sweatpants), chatting up a storm. "Those two," I thought. They always talk to the cutest guys." I ran along behind them f...
Read more

Dog-Day Running

Image
Still getting out frequently and doing the old left-right, although the experience has changed a bit over the years. Sometimes I still go back to the Bay Area and run-walk with my running peeps, but most days you'll find me run-walking in my West Sacramento neighborhood with a small black buddy. We're not the speediest pair, but we have our fun! This morning, before the heat set in, Charlie and I covered 1.42 miles. Woo hoo! I'm pushing her gradually to get up to two miles per outing. I'm ashamed to tell you that I love talking doggie baby talk with little Charlie--after all, she only weight 11 pounds, which is kind of baby-sized, right? If it takes talking about "walkies" and "sniffies" with her to give me incentive to get out the door, I'm in. Sometimes I sing little songs to Charlie when nobody else is around. Like the old favorite,  D-d-d doggie, beautiful doggie, you're the only d-d-dogie I adore; When the m- moon shines over the cowshed...
Read more