Mileage reporting week 17 of 2015

skedaddle

Barefooters
Sep 3, 2011
1,244
2,066
113
17 miles, a mixture of barefoot and shod.

For a while i was floating along like a butterfly until i got stung by a bee between my big toe, it certainly made things interesting for half hour or so ;)
The yellow gorse was blossoming and the field were a golden with rapeseed.
A lot of the run was on compacted chalk, which is like running on concrete. You have to really watch your form with this stuff and what makes it even more challenging is the reflective surface, it's like running in a oven, i went through 2 litres of water and still came back dehydrated.
I finished the run at the ancient stone circle at Avebury, where i touched my favourite monolith with my feet and said sorry for killing a bee.

golden_fields.jpg yellow_gorse.jpg chalk_downs.jpg avebury.jpg
 
Wow. Thanks for sharing! With the pix, I felt like I was there in the English countryside. Were those monoliths placed there by Druids?

I went barefoot around the lake yesterday on a 5.5 mile route from my house. With some stretching throughout the day I feel like I recovered nicely as far as I can tell. This morning I added a mile each way to and from the gym. So far so good.
 
Wow. Thanks for sharing! With the pix, I felt like I was there in the English countryside. Were those monoliths placed there by Druids?

I went barefoot around the lake yesterday on a 5.5 mile route from my house. With some stretching throughout the day I feel like I recovered nicely as far as I can tell. This morning I added a mile each way to and from the gym. So far so good.


No i don't think the Druids built Avebury or Stonehenge, although it has been adopted by them for ritual worship along with white witches, pagans and barefoot hippies ;).
Come the summer solstice and it's full of all sorts of New Age communities. It's an amazing experience, with colourful people singing traditional folk songs bolstered and lubricated by the real ale from the famous Red Lion pub.
It's a neolithic site, i believed was built by the Beaker people, named for the pottery they made, but i could be wrong.
 
Nice like always skedaddle, though you can keep that white chalky stuff ;)

Week started off slow for me. Did the half marathon with Yvonne on Sunday and we ran a pretty slow pace. Normally, that pace would have been even slower than our 15-20 mile long runs so I did not expect to have any soreness but I was more out of shape that I realized. Nothing bad, but my right leg was pretty tight in the calf and hamstring. Monday I was busy with things around the house and took it as a rest and recover day. Had to go in on nightshift too, and was planning on going back to bed for a couple more hours after I got my son to school. But it never happened. So after the race I didn't sleep the best, up at 7am, go into work 6PM and off 6AM next day, home shortly after 7AM. That was a long day! Did maybe around 50 flights of stairs or so.

Tuesday was wicked windy and I made the judgement call to mow the lawn instead of try to run. First mow was overdue already and the field to the north of my house wasn't mowed for the last month or so of last summer/fall so it was overgrown from last year still. Went into work, and did stairs again atleast, 50-70 flights I think.

Today I finally got a bit of a run in, 5.4 miles on the bike path. Just an easy pace to stretch the legs out. Yep, they were still tight. Not givign me the warm and fuzzy for my next race that I did actually want to 'race'. Still another week away so I may feel better, but for now I'll just dial back my goals to just having a good run and focus on training for my races later in summer.
 
Is this the correct week? I have been in a viral induced time warp. With altitude training, though.:p Traveled to Avon, Colorado while struggling to breathe in order to pick up a nomadic daughter. I felt like the earth was unstable beneath my feet and could never quite feel comfortable getting air. But I survived.

I got back into things Monday with 6 miles barefoot, followed by 15 minutes swimming that all went decently.

Tuesday was minimal 30 minutes spin bike and 20 minutes of swimming while visiting granddaughter napped.

Wednesday I ran 15 miles, which I am very pleased with. It wasn't a super easy run, but I felt stronger than I thought I might and am not sore today. With my only half marathon this year in 5 weeks, that is encouraging.
 
Sunday: a couple of miles, then a little ST
Monday: short walk. Brrrr. Windy.
Tuesday: gym
Wed: hike w kids, briskly (they are getting in better shape)
Th: trail run. felt great except for all the gnats that flew into my mouth while I was huffing and puffing on the last mile. Ew. A little strength training after.
Fri: nice little run around the nbhd. Cloudy, damp, mid 40sF for temp, felt pretty good. A little strength training after.
Not a bad week considering nasty insomnia and a lot of work (even though I'm not productive when I can't sleep----the irony!)

Tonight is grading grading grading and more grading.
 
I am continuing to take it easy so I just walked barefoot to and from the gym on Wednesday and Thursday, taking more or less direct routes, so it was only about a mile each day. Today, Friday, I went on a 4.1 mile run and walked home - .75 mile. It was a full day at work so I didn't have much time to worry about the bit of stiffness and soreness in my feet. All-in-all, a pretty good day!
 
Thursday I got a quite bike ride in, 9mi. Pretty windy, so just took it easy. 42 minutes, used my old LeTour. Did stairs that night at work, total of 78 flights (actually kept track this time) plus an extra 14 just down at the end.

Friday was still feeling tight, did a modest paced run of 8mi. Including warmup and cooldown 1:15. Seemed like it helped stretch the legs out a bit.

Not sure about the weekend, as I'll have my son by myself, and super busy. Haven't even mowed for the first time yet and its getting tall and thick (and its nearly a half day job). Of course that's going to require some wrenching on the tractor first, so quite possibly turning into an all weekend kind of job, besides also the roof I am working on the framing and insulating taking up the rest of the time. Oh yeah, guess I got to squeeze some time to cook meals and play with my son too! If its not raining I may get up early tomorrow and get a workout in before my son is up, but I've already squandered that possibility for today. It was cold this morning anyway. I'm so done with running in the cold!
 
This week we had the biggest storm I ever witnessed since I am in Australia with winds up to 130kmh, and about 300mm/1foot of rain in 24hrs.

Lots of flash flooding and not much running until Thursday.

I still managed about 35km/22mi for the week. I run in the city at lunch time, and I get lots of people asking me about barefoot running, they seem genuinely interested.
 
Spider - wow that certainly is a bad storm! My job sometimes entails running hydro generators and that much rain would cause quite a bit of havoc!

Was too busy all weekend to get any workout in until Sunday evening. But I did get a pretty good run in, 9.6mi. was finally feeling back to 100%. I did a full warmup & cooldown and 5 miles in the middle of that that were at my half marathon pace or a bit quicker. Little bit of walking in the middle and end in that too. Am a bit tight from it this morning so far.

Brings my last week total to 23 mi on foot and about 9 on the bike. Will take it easy this week in preparation for the Capital City Half Marathon on Saturday.