Post-marathon activities

Today I sat down and chose my next race: the Bartow Race for the Arts on March 5. I found a 5k training plan in an old issue of Runner's World that should help me prepare for it.  For some reason, I was convinced that almost every issue of RW had a 5k plan it in, but apparently not -- the one I chose is from the July 2008 issue (I keep all of my old issues just for such an occasion).  My goal is to best my 5k time: either run under 30 minutes or faster that 10-minute mile splits.  I've come close before.  My best 5k was in September 2009 and I had a 10:06 split, so this seems doable, particularly since I'm coming off of marathon training.

I have been taking a bit of a break since the marathon to allow for recovery, even though I have to say that I wasn't really feeling any serious problems.  Better safe than sorry though.  Basically, I've been trying to do something every 2 days over the past three weeks, although this hasn't always worked out.  I was in Canada, so that affected my plans since it was a bit tricky to just throw on my shoes and go for a run.  However, I did do a bit of running at our local recreation center (or 'centre'), where there is a track over one of the hockey rinks.  You know you're in Canada when you are running on a track above a hockey rink.

I thought about some other activities to do and brought the appropriate equipment; however, I didn't actually do any of those activities.  For instance, I brought my swim suit and even made a plan to go swimming and everything.  Then it turned out that the pool was closed for maintenance.  I brought my skates but just didn't have the motivation to go. 

What I did wind up doing several times was cross-country skiing.  I went to the local park and skied around a bit.  There were no interesting hills or anything like that, just pretty basic trails.  It was fun and a nice change from the usual.  Here is a sample of the park:

Typical grey day in my Canadian hometown

I also had to take this picture because it isn't every day that you see skis and a Florida license plate:

I think I've had those skis since the Reagan administration.

Skiing was a nice change of pace and I enjoyed the opportunity to do it. However, it's rather tricky to do in Florida, so back to running tomorrow morning.