holding pattern Sunday, holding pattern August

Yesterday: All sorts of dark clouds went by, but not a drop!  My run was likewise suspended.

Today: still waiting but I did Zwow #31.  Mostly.  I kept up with the squat jumps and mountain climbers, and I mostly kept up with the sit ups until the last ten of the last rep (did she get faster, or did I wilt?), but I did about 80% of her pushups and burpees.  She is so strong.

And I am so weak.  I am even more wrung out by the weather.  The promised deluge didn't come but jacked up the humidity anyway.  We're back to highs in the mid to high 30s C and shitty air quality.  All I want to do is sleep.

Getting a bit of rain

But the Tonganoxie split is apparently still in action, and we're part of it.  The radar is sobering.  Huge clumps of thick clouds with serious punch into the scary oranges and reds heeding an invisible border around the town.  Occasionally we get a wimpy green straggler wander over and spit a few times before rejoining the herd.

So it's been drizzling on and off, and I'm sparing some strength for a (hilly, of course) long run tomorrow, if possible: 7 miles in 75 minutes on the treadmill today.

How are we not getting any rain?

Storms have been circling to the north, south, and west all morning.  The sky has been an odd hazy yet scintillating yellow-grey under darker clouds.  I took the dog out for 1.5 miles fully expecting to feel rain, and then I jogged on the treadmill for an hour fully expecting to see rain, and 5 hours later, the ground is still dry.  Oddly enough, the temperature has risen almost three degrees Celsius in the past hour.  I cannot interpret the significance of this despite my weather-related obsessiveness because I am actually meteorologically ignorant.

The treadmill run was ok.  My energy level was very low yesterday--I didn't do anything except whatever I did at work--and though both I and the air quality felt much better today, my legs were still slightly sluggish.  No matter how I adjusted my form, I couldn't hold onto a truly easy level for more than a few seconds here or there, even though my breathing remained calm.  However, almost exactly 51 minutes into my run, I recaptured that special hip-piston feeling, wherein everything above and below is stacked properly, reducing apparent movement and effort to a slight tilt of the right hip and of the left in alternation.  That's probably the best way to describe it yet, and so from now on, I suppose I'll just be talking about the hip-pistons and if they're firing or not.  Anyway, once they had been firing for a few minutes, I realized that I should then focus on the opposite side lifting up.  Give that stuff a bit more space.  Then, and only then, did everything else loosen.  But it all still felt a bit heavy.  Still, the pace was the same as my last TM run, and it was otherwise an easy run.

And then I did the regular shoulder/clamshell thing I do when I'm not quite up to a zwow.  I also did these exercises on Wednesday.  This hasn't been a zwow week at all, although I have done 1/2 of a MarC workout (mainly core) 3 evenings this week, which has been feeling effective.  Maybe that's sapped some of the zwow juice, but it seems good to do a little something in the evening.

Time for some rain!!!

So the air is crappy and I was feeling crappier

But I got on the treadmill and had the airiest easiest jog in a long while.  I was suspended in another dimension for an hour, with thin tethers to a quiet piston-like hip flexor action, the soft hum of a well-tended engine pulling my weightless limbs and core along.  Does this make sense?  Where the heck did I go?  My body fled discomfort entirely.

drained again

And I seem to have a slight cold.  So much for the restorative effect of a 4 day weekend.  Maybe running outside umpteen days in a row is a bit too much, too soon.   Unfortunately, there is no true easy run out there, but I have to take the dog out every day; the inefficiency of running on the treadmill and walking the dog in the same morning tends to mire me somehow.  And the air here is still just plain disagreeable.  This astonishes me: we are in a small town, not close to major industry--why am I having more issues than I did in Bucheon and Seoul?  Where's the convenience, then? The diversity? Or the excitement?  The recent theft of my husband's bike and numerous encounters with drunks/druggies don't count--on that note, the local police has recently become kind of sloppy about releasing them in the ER.  Take them home! or somewhere else so they don't hang about sitting in the parking lot and asking me about someone called Amber who got shot in the head.  That's the best story I've gotten so far here, and it was just a scrap.  Turns out that his friend Amber went to a different hospital, and survived, almost two years ago.  Some friend he is!  He could phone her.  

But this town is still probably better than most, and there is Amazon and the local farmers' market and a recently-launched monthly art gallery/reception series, and after a couple of hours at work in super-duper air filtration, I feel so much better; at least I'm getting a bit of a break.  And Amber survived!

Monday: 1.5 miles with the dog in the morning, 1/2 of a MarC workout and stretches in the evening.  I've been wanting some sort of something after work, nothing too strenuous but engaging enough to dampen post-work hyperactivity, and I also want to resume some yin yoga poses.  I'll see if this does the trick.

Today: walked with the dog, did zwow 28.  Sluggishly.

numbers escaped through my fingers

But not much cheese or alcohol.  Yes, it's been that kind of weekend, but we did run yesterday (4ish miles) and today (6ish miles), and that's the important thing.

I will try to be tough this week.

The big hill

It was 13C when I woke up this morning.  That's as good and cool as it's going to get this time of the year, and better than would be expected.  I got ready and turned to the dog, "let's go."

Actually, he was telling me that the moment I got out of bed!   Letsgoletsgoletsgo.   Recently, I've been appreciating his evaluation of the weather.  The dog who hardly budged out of bed during the heat waves is so very anxious to go out whenever the weather's nicer and cooler than normal.  He didn't use to be so attuned.

We enjoyed a very leisurely downhill warm-up for about half a mile, and then the hills started working against our favour.  First there was the little series of four that we also run on the 3 mile route, and then it was on.  I managed to catch some of my breath on the downhills--heck, even on slight uphills because my treadmill is also slightly uphill (1% grade, I think)--and I managed to remember to relax parts of my form and avoid excess right shoulder tightness (a long-term issue; I have to be doing more shoulder exercises).  However, the level of effort pretty much stayed in the long tempo run range--and got solidly into the lactic-acid buildup range--until I was up and over the large hill and down about 3/4 of a mile on the other side and looking at yet another, though smaller, hill, which effectively snuffed out recovery.

This is what running here is like.  Hill after hill after hill.  I am hoping that, if I manage to get in shape enough, I could recover completely, or almost completely, on the downhills, but I have only 4 months left here.  At any rate, I'm going to try to do that 8 mile loop at least once a week, and I won't feel too bad if that takes the place of a zwow workout, as it probably will do this week.  I was way too tired by the end of it, and my core is still burning.  Actually, I am missing another zwow workout as well...I guess I'll call this a major recovery week and just run to loosen up tomorrow, and start afresh on Sunday.  Oh, well!

We ran 7.8 miles in 75 minutes and then we walked the last 0.4 of a mile.  9:36/mile while running all these hills, I'll take it!  Even going up the hill was under 10:00/mile and though things were feeling pretty sore by the top, I wasn't losing as much heart as I'd feared I would.  It went better than I'd expected.  I was especially impressed by the dog's stamina.   He hasn't run more than a lackluster 2 or so miles in well over a month, but he was game today.  At the top of the large hill, I offered him water and part of my Gu gel, but he declined in favour of pissing on choice clumps of tall grass like a boss.

Temp: 16- 20C, kind of humid, but WAY BETTER than what it has been.  We lucked out.

It was so nice to check out the sights again instead of trying not to stare at treadmill display numbers.  We ran by a restaurant with one of the scariest signs I've seen yet in town "Welcome, Skeeter the Clown."  Yes, I share that oh so hackneyed distrust of clowns, and "Skeeter" is not a name that comes even close to overcoming my prejudice.  Later on, we also ran past the Miracle Trading Post.  I'm not sure if this is a new establishment.  Sadly, I forgot to enjoy the view at the top of the hill, where I can see things on the top of other tall hills in the distance, and other things too like the particularly classy looking local federal prison.  We did admire someone's pretty fish pond, though.  It looks better than mine although mine has flowers.   But no visible brightly coloured fish.  Due to feral cats and the possum in our backyard (and occasionally a skunk passes through and my husband once saw a coyote in front of our house) I have given my koi plenty of places under rocks; due to the predominantly sunlit location of our pond and the recent heat waves, I have bought enough plants to completely cover the surface of the pond as well.  So I never see my koi just swimming lazily about like the fish were doing in this other pond.  When they come to the surface at feeding time, they attack like sharks (I think of them as water tigers, most of them are orange and black) and quickly retreat back to the shadows.  However, two of them will flop atop of vegetation, mostly out of the water, and lie there for a few seconds while gobbling food.  Not coincidentally, these two have become the largest.

Enough about fish! http://www.runningmap.com/?id=435868  Not completely accurate--I left out some blocks and another small hill or two and the start/end points are not at my house at all, but this is the gist of our run.  Click on Show Elevation for the full scoop.