Gettin' back at it

Feels good to put some miles back on my legs. I ran a solid 33.6 miles last week culminating in a 16 miler on Saturday on the rails to trails path close to my former hood. A very flat run but the trails provides a comfortable landing surface. A very quiet run - the most exciting part was around mile 2. I heard some rustling in the woods close to the path so I stopped and tried to spot what was going on. A ruffed grouse (aka, partridge) was just off the path so I did my best Dr. Doolittle and cooed a little. This bird definitely isn't long for this world...it walked up to within 6 feet of me. Not like I was camoflaged - I had a bright red shirt on.
Cool to see though.
All I could think of was how good it would have tasted - sauteed or roasted. Sorry, I'm a hunter/gatherer at heart.

Well, I finished the 16 in about a 9:08 mpm pace - although it did feel a bit quicker. I started to play the strange mental games at around 1:30 into the run. I just didn't want to be doing it anymore. But, I trudged on and finished just as my legs were getting crampy.

Sunday I had the nice fatigue feeling in my legs. Just perfect for chasing Pdiddy around at her birthday/christening.

Today I managed a 5 mile tempo run, with 3 being at a tempo pace. This is the first speed work I attempted since having a calf strain so it really felt good to take some deep breaths and stretch out the legs a little. My tempo pace was ~7:05 mpm for the first 1.5 and ~7:25 for the second 1.5 miles. Strange drop off that I'm attributing to the hills on my normal route.

Looking forward to jumping in the pool tomorrow. I'm liking the challenge of getting better at swimming.

It's supposed to snow here on Wednesday. WTF?