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Here’s a short video shot by Michael Street, my incredible coach at CrossFit Eastside of me working band-assisted kipping pullups morning. First full speed, then slowed down to analyze form. Note that my push back at the top of the movement starts to decline as I fatigue - but my hip drive increases to compensate. Awesome to be able to vid these and watch them back to really drive performance improvement.

Check me out here doing my first handstand!

Many have asked how the Zone food delivery/diet is going - just take a look at breakfast! Peanut butter stuffed french toast with syrup, chicken sausage, and fresh fruit. Really quite good and also filling! 1100 cals a day overall is pretty light for the workouts I’m doing so BOY OH BOY do I get hungry in between meals. Thankfully the intervals are pretty short!

Crossfit going great even with the calorie restricted diet - maybe better in fact! Today I PRed on Push Jerk - 39Kilos!! 88lbs, well more than half my body weight!

Today’s my first day of having Zone Seattle food delivered to my house. So far so AMAZING! This is my afternoon snack - some kind of pizza pita thingies that are so yummy AND seem like a total treat to me. Nothing I would ever think I am supposed to/allowed to eat and still lose weight. Yep - I’m on a killer track to lose the last little bit (read: Lean out something fierce like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2), but more importantly, really chase some awesome CrossFit performance. Dialing in the diet scientifically with weighed and measured food in exactly the right proportions is the way to do it so I’m going to hire the pros to get me off to the right start. All my food for the day shows up at my door by 6am. MAGIC!

My photos from the weekend CrossFit Seattle Championships. I didn’t compete, but was so excited to be there and support the other CrossFit Eastside athletes!

My father had pretty serious back troubles when I was younger. I don’t remember him ‘throwing it out’ often (perhaps he did and I just don’t remember) but I do remember that it all came to a head sometime around my Jr. year of high school that involved ruptured discs, a hospital stay with 7 days in traction followed by surgery and several weeks of him working out of a home office that consisted of a rug on our living room floor that he would lie face down with papers spread about. I remember that getting in and out of the car was difficult, and that sitting in the car and driving was nearly impossible for a period of time. I remember his back stretches. I remember that it did get better.

Whether hereditary or not I too have had my share of back issues over the years mostly down to being out of shape and/or straining things too hard with yard work, marathon training, or other random stuff. This week what seemed like another in a “no big deal” string of inflammations delivered (via an MRI yesterday) the upsetting news that my back looks like one of an “aerobics instructor” in terms of the number of and the degree to which my discs are herniated. I’ll get more details today but basically it’s nearly all the discs from cervical on down with the worst being L4-5. Those little babies are bulging or whatever they do and are touching the nerve – likely causing lot of my pain. Yesterday was my first in what is meant to be a series of 3 cortisone shots – step number 1 to reducing inflammation to the point where I can move and sleep (would be nice) and then figure out what to do from here.

I can safely say that getting a shot in my spinal cord was the most scary thing I’ve had to experience so far in this life. The staff was wonderful and really did a great job keeping me calm and making me feel better but HOLY CRAP what they call “you’ll feel some pressure” has a whole different level of meaning when it’s pressure on your OH, spinal cord. Super duper mega thanks to colleague Stacia for driving my panicked ass to and from the loooooong appointment.

And a note: Yes, thank you, those who have said “you’ll wreck your body” about one of my crazy fitness exploits (marathon training, CrossFit, etc). I know you’re saying it out of love and you may well be totally and completely right. However, I LOVE doing those things and while they MIGHT have contributed to this back thing they have also made me much healthier in many other ways such as weight, flexibility, and most importantly mentally. There’s every possibility that this would be exactly the same had I never run a mile in my life.

Ok, likely this is just me, but thought I’d give it a shot. Anyone else have trouble with swim goggles giving you super big/blueish marks around your eyes that last for, um, an hour or so? I’ve tried switching goggles and have loosened them to the point that they don’t stay seated when I turn in the pool, and am hoping that there’s just some trick I don’t know of like lining the seal surface with vasiline/spit or some such.

So I’ve just returned from a very short little weekend jaunt out to the California desert, Joshua Tree, to be exact. I headed out there largely because I’ve heard through musicians I admire (Tim Easton for one, but there are a ton) that it’s a really groovy place and it happened to be just a few hours outside LA where I needed to be on business on a Thursday evening. SO convenient. I did a ton of research only trying to find a place to stay and took a chance on Sacred Sands, a B&B in Joshua Tree. I should start by saying that the directions told of a 2 hour drive (140ish miles) but mentioned something about possibly 5 with traffic. I left Manhattan Beach at 2:15PM and arrived at Joshua Tree at 8:15pm. Yikes! Along the way I learned that Chino stinks. Really stinks. Like urine and feces. Not so great when you’re in a convertible stuck in traffic for hours. EEEW.

Eventually, I arrived, was greeted pleasantly (which was gracious given my late arrival) and fell into bed. Arose via alarm and also dawn filtering into my room at 6:30am the next day to begin my desert adventure. Ate a wonderful brekkie of grapefruit topped with kiwi and roasted cardamom (mmmm), followed by a baked clafouti type thing with home made pear and Cinnamon syrup, home made turkey sausage and yam hash. I nearly fainted it was so delightful. In a haze of yummy I headed to “downtown” (a crossroads with about 10 shops) to visit the farmers market and pick up a shade hat and returned way too many hours later bearing fresh strawberries, radishes ($.50 a bunch), dried paypaya, a ROCKIN hat (now seen in my profile photo) and way too much else J Retail damage was _done_. Highlights included celery/beet/ginger/veggie juice at Velocity, and the hat from Coyote Corner.

Then it was out to the desert for a hike. I had several noted in my research but the B&B hosts had a different plan for me to hike in solitude with “Close in” things to enjoy like washes to hike up, giant boulders to scrabble over, and then dramatic vistas to enjoy. Their directions involved fairly complicated map navigation and certainly involved “turn off the dirt road” onto a single car dirt road. Took me several tries to get it right but eventually got on the right one and cruised out with the top down and the local Joshua Tree Music Fest CD blaring. Set off on the hike and other than a father and son right at the beginning I didn’t see another human until I returned several hours later. It was just  

Me  

And all that sky, all those incredible rocks, and so many cool desert growing things.  

I can honestly say that hike was a near religious experience for me. I sat for indeterminate periods of time and gazed at beauty. I learned that time, at least in the desert, and perhaps everywhere, moves at a pace relative to that which I am moving. Meaning that minutes felt like HOURS. It was the most relaxed I have been possibly EVER. I was a bit worried that with all that’s been going on for me that I would freak out or really just not be able to wind down but just the opposite – I unwound and everything became so much clearer. I resolved to do more of the things I enjoy (what’s important) and less of what I don’t (what’s not important). Throughout the hike there was a crow giving me hell, circling around and  just generally making it known that he knew I was there tramping in his space and at one point I was quite high on a peak looking out over the desert and he flew quite close to me making this WEIRD noise that scared the sh*t out of me. Once I calmed down I realized that it was the noise of his wings flapping. Now folks, I grew up in the woods, spent most of my childhood out there alone climbing, hiking, whittling branches and whatnot – no stranger to nature is Christine but I’m pretty sure I had no idea that wings made noise and I don’t think I’ve ever had a bird fly past my head in quite that way. Incredible.  

After a few hours I headed back toward the car carefully navigating as things do get a little confusing out there Jand headed into town to meet up with a gallery owner to look at some work by favorite musician of mine, Tim Easton. Picked up a few pieces of his super-cute folk art with a “lucky” theme, cruised back to the B&B to shower, then back out to another gallery opening where I found this piece – again with the lucky! Clearly the theme of the trip.  

Spent Sat night in my private hot tub under the stars (OMG the night sky! OMG!) watching arguably the best night sky in North America. Sunday morning found me teary at the prospect of leaving this newfound peace so soon, and devastated to return to my currently broken life in Seattle.  

I’ll leave it at this. I’m trying to hold onto bits of the peace and am using little triggers to get back to it (the roots music is helping) when things get rough. I’m thrilled and feel extremely grateful to have been able to do it, and plan to return again soon and regularly, alone. Seems like I’ve spent way too much time neglecting to check in with myself on some extended solitude and I’m committed to doing it at least twice a year or so. Otherwise I’m not sure I’ll see things clearly. Ideally I’d love to get a second place there – the pull was that strong. Stronger even than the pull I felt from Seattle when I first visited here and stronger than New Zealand. Likely due to the place in time and space that I visited this magical spot.  

Ok, folks, let the healing begin!  I have to head to LA for business this week and thought a short weekend diversion to the desert might be just the right little bit of healing I need. Just TAKE a look at the amazing spot I found that by some miracle is available to me to stay the weekend?!!! Yay, Sacred Sands in Joshua Tree, CA. Just a shame that favorite musician of mine and Joshua Tree resident Tim Easton will be touring Alaska while I’m visiting his town!
 

New Year’s resolutions have never been my thing. I’m pretty driven and frankly find _every day_ to be a challenge and so, perhaps, have never felt the need to call out some arbitrary date as the “date from which all things will be different”. I set, reach, and extend goals all the time with no thought to the rolling over of calendar years. That said, I think this year might be different. Well, ok, sure, I know this year is different. It’s the first year I’ll be single and living alone after 10 years of partnership & marriage. So there’s that. I’m hoping that partially due to that major change it’ll be a year filled with less drama and hardship, and hopefully less of a year where I feel I have to ‘gut it out’ each and every day. Leading up to this change this year has been filled with stress, pressure, intensity, pain, and health concerns along with a million other dramas – just like every year. But it’s also been filled with incredible good fortune – like the day I was about to make a jump that would have changed my health insurance coverage that I also found out about my health concerns (! The VERY day) that caused me NOT to make the jump that would have been a TOTAL DISASTER given my now pending divorce.  

So I dedicate 2008 to practicing being more grateful. Yes, there’s the big stuff that I’m SO grateful for - my health (SO far, and something that I should never, ever take for granted and yet do nearly every minute of every day), a rewarding and steady career, loving family and friends, etc. But more importantly, those odd little times when I find that I get precisely what I need. Like changing up my morning schedule to include a yoga class that started this morning that included several wonderful bits of wisdom from the instructor for me to meditate on. It starts 30 minutes later than my usual 6am Pilates class so I got a few minutes extra sleep AND some great tidbits from the class to start my day. I can’t remember them all as elegantly as she stated them but there was one to the effect of “the more you relax into it the better it gets”, one about not sitting in judgment about how you are performing the yoga movements (this one was GREAT), and one FAB one about Duhka (suffering) only coming from the failure to detach. 

2008 will also be about not trying so HARD at everything. I was all set to have only one thing to focus on but if there’s a key lesson I really need to practice/learn it’s to relax and let what will be just _be_.  I’ve talked about this topic before in this forum, as it’s a bit of feedback I get _a lot_. “Don’t be so hard on yourself”. So I’m going to give it a go.  

The open question is, how to track? Should I record instances of daily thanks? Actually sounds like a really dang good idea.  

Today I’m thankful for having a lovely yoga practice which was just what I needed.  

On the working less hard at everything: I also moved out of my 3day/week 6am class schedule to a 2 day/week 6:30am class schedule and one evening class. I’ve also started swimming over the last few weeks, and hope that will be an easier way for me to work my body than my previous training activities. Swimming has always been a strong point for me – growing up on a lake and spending nearly every summer day of my childhood in the water, lifeguarding and teaching. It’s also the perfect workout for me right now as I injured my SI joint again this weekend while moving some things into storage.  

Now if I can just get past January 4^th without breaking anything I’ll be off to a better start than last year!  

Began my day with a barium cocktail and a  CT scan machine that talked to me - instructuing me when to hold my breath and when to release - unfortunately I forgot to hold my breath at a key moment due to the fact that I was focusing on the “Sensation” I was warned about. Best medical warning ever “You’ll feel a warm flush all over your body and like you are URINATING. It should go away after about a minute”. Not feeling like you “need” to urinate - that you ARE urinating. It did feel like that and I was so distracted by that oddity that I just kept on breathing. Too funny.

Oh, and for the curious/concerned: I’ve got a few bits being looked at on my liver and other surrounding areas. Nothing to be alarmed about at this stage and I fully expect to learn that they’re harmless/unexplained or get some other mysterious non-diagnosis. I happen to have really good health insurance at the moment so I think my docs are getting a little “test-happy” or are just being ultra-cautious. Not to worry!

Heading into still and video shoots for a new campaign I’m launching at work soon so yesterday was spent with my agency looking at casting for the ads. Too much fun. One piece of the creative involves a kind of ‘every day’ guy in a competitive athletic situation so we got to spend time looking at audition videos and discussing how the actors would look in a singlet. Hopefully this weekend I’ll get to tag along on the “prop” shopping to help pick out some tri suits. Another execution is a scene of a guy walking a very energetic dog so we also got to go over cast options for the dog - “this dog is big but seems slow and powerful - that one is too friendly - that one has too much hair”. I find it fascinating that tons of tiny details are critical to ’saying’ what you want to say in an ad. We shoot next week (weather permitting) so I’m looking forward to my “client” director’s chair and the requisite latte!  

Walking into the locker room at the gym this morning just in time for 5:30am “Race Day” Spinning I glanced at the clock and did a very groggy double take - the clock read 1:21. Took me several more seconds than it should have to run through the following thoughts:

• That clock looks wrong
• The hands are in different places than they are supposed to be
• The minute hand looks like it’s in the right place, though, for what time I think it is
• Oh, wait - but the hour hand is CERTAINLY not right - it’s on the “1″!
• Or is it the right time?
• I was tossing and turning all night and the cat woke me up about every 10 minutes with a whisker to the face
• Right…’cause then I sat up and got out of bed when it was 3:40am thinking that it was time to get up then realized that I had until 4:20 to sleep
• Oh, right, but if I got up at 3:40 then again at 4:20 it can’t possibly be 1:21.
• Besides, the gym wouldn’t even be open if it were 1:21am.
• Oh, crap - now I don’t know what time it is - am I late for spinning?

Seriously, I did stand there for a while running all those thoughts. I’m, well, not the sharpest knife in the drawer in the morning. Certainly the surliest, but not the sharpest.

So I ran up to the spinning room and all was fine - except the clock didn’t work in there either! Let me tell you a two hour spinning class goes PRETTY SLOWLY when you can’t look up to the clock to check the time! Plus the mic was out so Josh had to shout the class - so we were operating without the usual fantastic Josh cheerleading. 

The cool thing was that the clocks were still not working when I went down to the locker room to shower up after class and I swear everyone in there was operating at a totally relaxed pace. Usually it’s a mad dash for showers, dryers, irons and whatnot - but today everyone seemed so relaxed - as though being freed from the constraints of the clock let each of them decide “this will take as long as it takes”. That’s pretty close to my ideal state in my fantasy land where I live for months in a Japanese monastary and my master teaches me that sweeping the stoop will be done “when it is done” and “take as long as it takes”.  Having that tiny bit of freedom this morning made a wonderful start to the week.

Even though we lost we had the most fun and competitive tennis match in recent memory this weekend - yay! In fact, we won more games during this match than we have in all of our matches this season combined. Generally speaking we just played much better both individually and together as a team. Far fewer moon ball baseline shots that landed so long they might well have been inside the service line in the next court behind us, far fewer volleys dumped into the net and some actual real live well played points. THIS is why we play the game. We’re both glad that we’ve stuck with it after the really humiliating 6-0, 6-1 blowouts to finally feel like we’re able to compete.

We came to tennis quite late in life - in our mid-30s - when we lived in (what we mostly consider exile) in Atlanta, which is home to the world’s largest recreational tennis community. You can say a LOT of bad things about Atlanta, but the tennis is purely world class. There’s more public tennis centers than roadside peach and boiled peanut stands (and that’s saying a lot), and there is nearly always, just about 24 hours a day, an opportunity to grab a pick up game, league, play-instruct, or best of all a round robin. We started with some play instructs, quickly joined mixed-doubles and singles teams, and moved on to spend every Friday night playing an awesome fun round-robin a couple nights a week at play instructs, and every Sunday playing league doubles where the women take the event so seriously that they bring table cloths, flower arrangements and so much fancy food you would NOT believe it. It’s a whole day event for which you show up to set the food and watch the doubles draw progress through the day starting with the lower levels and moving on to the really competitive matches. At any time there’s about 20 matches going on across all the courts of every public tennis center in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area - men on Saturdays and ladies on Sundays. It’s a ton of fun.

Once we decided to leave Atlanta and move back to the PNW, we spent quite a few months not working-  finishing a large landscaping project that we had just started which made for the perfect opportunity to really spend time polishing our tennis games! We took weekly lessons from a super nice local pro, and continued our competitive play right up until after we had returned to Seattle. After I started at Microsoft I had to fly back to Atlanta to play in our mixed doubles city championship - which we WON! Too cool.

That was nearly four years ago, though, and Seattle does not have the climate or the tennis community that we enjoyed in Georgia, so since we’ve been back we’ve been lucky to play a few times a year. Finding the Amy Yee tennis center and getting in on their play instructs over the last few months has been a really fun yet frustrating return to the game for us as we’ve nearly had to start from the beginning - pulling all the power off our strokes to find our timing and consistent form again. So far it’s been an exercise mostly in pure patience as we make mistake after mistake and dump shot after shot either into the net, way long, or (at best) in play but nowhere near the spot we intended to hit.
Friday night was a bit of a breakthrough with longer rally on nearly every point, fewer shots missed and, as a result, much less swearing - yay!  

OMG! Late last week I hurt my back – only slightly at first – but then when I woke up Friday morning it hurt quite a bit so I dosed on Ibuprofen all day and worked from any type of reclined/supported position that I could bear to be in for more than a minute at a time on my couch. By the end of the day it felt good enough to go play my scheduled doubles match (in hindsight NOT a super idea) but when I woke up and got out of bed on Saturday morning I could barely straighten up and it hurt like crazy. The pain was in my lower back – really low – like high glute low – and on the left side. This is notable because it felt like the exact same injury same location/same level of pain I’ve had many times before – only on the right side. “Curious” I thought to myself and headed out to walk the dog thinking it would loosen. Uh. Yea. Not so much on the loosen. It was really more of a shuffle and the dog was pretty much pulling me back up the hill to the house.  Spent the remainder of Saturday on the couch, then dragged/drugged myself up to function for part of Sunday. With each passing day it improved and by today (Weds) I felt able to go to Pilates, though with some obvious modifications to spinal motions.

Where this gets interesting is that I had previously scheduled physical therapy appointment today to do some work on the sternoclavicular joint but when I limped in we opted to change up the focus to my back. This is a new physical therapist for me and after a few diagnostic motions she was able to show me that my SI joint (sacroiliac) on the left side was nearly immobile. Apparently if that joint “jams” it causes lots of other compensating problems, and so on, and so on. As it turned out that the “occurring on one side then the other” bit and the “hurts in the morning” bit helped to confirm the diagnosis as if you have the issue on one side you’re quite prone to have it on both. I’ve had lots of issues with my hips and sacral area that increase a lot when I turn up the volume on my running, so it seems that backing off my distance training for a while is a smart move. Today the PT was able to do some manipulation to make it feel better, give me the usual scrip of exercises to strengthen the area, AND she recommended that I go for a few massages. Oh, darn. Even though my massage therapist is HARD CORE and there is no relaxing on her table it does help me feel a-mazing afterwards so I’ll be headed to the table of pain.

I’m SO stoked to know what has been happening to what I thought was my back/high glute for the past few years AND to know what to do to avoid it happening again. Yay!  

Ok, who on Sweat365 has a kickbike or better yet - a kicksled! Seems like the kicksled would be an incredible winter workout tool.  Karl - have you ridden one of these?

There was another accident involving a cyclist late yesterday evening on Juanita Drive just south of Kenmore. I haven’t been able to find any news items to learn what happened. When I rode by - about 6pm - accident investigation appeared to have begun as cycles and cars remained but injured parties had already left the scene. The bike/bikes were slightly off the east side of the road - perhaps were headed N down the hill into Kenmore - a route and descent I do regularly and am _always_ nervous during due to the turns, debris on shoulder, and often quite backed up traffic. *shiver* I hope no one was seriously injured but if the degree of spread-outness of the cycle and gear was any indication it doesn’t look good. Be careful out there everyone!

A week of dual rental cars as our Subaru was rear ended and our Jeep broke down (again) sent me straight over the edge…..to the local VW dealership….and right off the lot with a brand new VW Eos! Thank goodness for the awesome rates I get from (former employer) The Coca-Cola Company credit union! I am loving this car so much it’s pa-the-tic. 2.0L Turbo with a 6 speed manual (can you say SPEEDING ticket coming any time now) and all kinds of fancy including steering mounted audio controls (!), dual climate controls, and, well, the retractable hardtop:

Went bike shopping again this weekend - and wound up back at our favorite local “spend way more than we mean to but decide it’s great since it’s a local business where the folks are always good to us” toy store - Gerk’s Alpine Hut. Managed to not walk out the door with a bike, but spent a couple hours sizing, getting settings, etc. and will be riding two this week: Specialized Ruby Comp and the Specialized Dolce Comp. Should be super interesting. After the mountain bike anything is going to seem feather light but I’m not sure I’ll feel the difference between the full carbon frame and the aluminum with carbon fork & seat post. Even if I do feel the difference do I need a full carbon frame? That’s not the only difference, of course. The Ruby has a compact crankset - I think this is the two ring thing that keeps your chainline nicer than a 3, but still gets you the same range of gears. Given that I live at the bottom of one of the better climbing hills in the area good climbing gears are a must. I am a little worried that either one will be more bike than I need - but hopefully I’ll grow into them? Well, I ride them on Thursday this week so we’ll see. My plan is to ride them both “blind” (not asking what differences I’m supposed to be looking for) to see what I notice - then to go back to the shop and ask what differences I should have noticed.

Today marks the ten year anniversary of the day my father died. The do-it-himself-er in him would appreciate that I’ll be spending it (my final day of vacation) grouting and buffing flooring.

Tagged by balbert!

Jobs I’ve held-

1. Roller coaster operator
2. US Congressional Intern
3. Camp counselor
4. Emerging Tech Dir on Coca-Cola ”Think Tank”

Movies I Can Watch Over & Over-
1. The Crow
2. Love Actually
3. Say Anything
4. Princess Bride

My Guilty Pleasures-
1. Lululemon clothing
2. All sorts liqourice
3. Ice Breaker clothing
4. Dried mangoes

Places I Have Lived-
1. Long Beach, California
2. Carrollton, Ohio
3. New York, NY
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Seattle, WA

Shows I Enjoy-
1. Flight of the Chonchords
2. Daily Show
3. Prison Break
4. So You Think You Can Dance
Places I have Been on Vacation-
1. Poland
2. New Zealand
3. Denmark
4. Bali

Favorite Foods-
1. Bulgogi at Do Hwa in NYC
2. Perogi
3. 3400 Phinney chocolate
4. See guilty pleasures above
Websites I visit Daily-
1. techcrunch
2. Scoble
3. Adrants
4. Dooce

Body Parts I have injured-
1. Wrist - broken snowboarding
2. Ankle - broken jumping from tractor
3. Right foot - pierced by a spike
4. Right foot - bone bruise during ‘06 Seattle marathon training

Awards You’ve Won-
Microsoft Marketing Innovation Award, “Rock Star”

Nicknames you’ve been called-
1. Ziggy
2. Luke
3. Looks-so-sick (mean, mean kids!)
4. Gwen

Tagged:

1. Kip

2. Colleen

3. Rather be running

4. Shooper

Mmmm, Luna Elixir in Pomegranate Berry is tasty. At 10g of sugar per packet it should be, but it takes less than a packet to make 16oz of water taste a little yummy!

Realized this weekend that if I’m actually planning to do the Super Jock & Jill 1/2 marathon on Sept 3rd that I’ve got, er, 8 weeks to ramp. Currently I’m lucky if I’m running 10 miles in a week, 4miles is my long run, I’ve been doing speedwork maybe every other week and virtually no hill repeats. Last year at this time I was already doing 11 and 12 mile long runs, speed work, and hill repeats. Hmmmm. Last year I did the race in 2:23 and I know I won’t be happy if I run it slower than I did last year so I guess I’d better get going!

I think I’ll try virtually dropping hill repeats and focusing on speed intervals, one short and one long run each week building my volume till the week before an doing a one-week taper.

The rationale is that my hill fitness is really pretty good - I go up them just about as quickly as I run on the flat. I do get anaerobic but I’m totally capable of recovering while I jog and also know that I’m capable of finishing the 1/2 being anaerobic pretty much the entire race. Also my short run route is nearly 50% uphill so I do get hillwork in and I think I’ll just add a repeat or three onto the end of my short run and get it in there rather than doing a specific hill repeat run like I did last year.

Should be interesting to see how it goes. I’ll be going into the training session remarkably less fit than I was at this time last year mostly down to my winter broken-arm disaster. That said, for the 4 months I was not running due to the arm I was doing squats and lunges every day so perhaps my hips/knees and all the other bits will stand up better to the volume of training.

Either way this will be a nice runup to the full marathon training so we’ll buckle in and see how things go. Back to early rising Sunday morning long runs!