Into the Woods (and back again)

Some of you may recall, from earlier in this blog, that I was excited to run in Munich because I was right next to the woods.  That turned out to be somewhat true.  I am right next to some woods, although there is not a whole lot of 'woods' there.  You're through it in around a quarter of a mile.  When I was thinking 'woods,' I was thinking more along the lines of somewhere that had trees for miles and miles.

(I don't want to knock my local woods.  There is a beer garden in there.  A beer garden in the woods within a 5-minute walk of your house is never, under any circumstances, a bad thing).

Today was my first 'long run' in a long time.  I call it a 'long run,' even though it was 5 miles, which is only one mile further than I have been running every week.  But Sunday is long run day and I hadn't actually run 5 miles in...well....I'm not sure, but it's been an awfully long time.  I decided to head for the real woods. It's easy enough: you take the graveyard path, except instead of turning, you stay straight, and eventually boom!  You are at the woods.  The only problem is that the run there is about 2 miles, so anything less than a 5-mile run doesn't really work.

This is what I mean by 'the woods'!  Actual picture of actual forest in which I actually ran this morning. (Image: http://geo.hlipp.de/photos/01/05/010594_f0feb055.jpg)

The woods were totally worth it though.  It was great!  There were trees and paths, just like I imagined it.  And it was quiet, apart from other bikers and runners who enjoy actual woods as well.  Also, the weather today was ideal: in the low 60s with sun, but not too much sun.  I could not have asked for better conditions and I was reminded just how nice it is to run routes like this on days like this.

There was no question in my mind that I was going to finish this run.  In fact, it went more smoothly than plenty of my other recent runs.  My calves were a bit tight to start, but that went away pretty quickly and by the end, I was running pretty well.  Quite well, actually.  It was a great run overall.  Made me feel much more confident about doing this half-marathon.  After all, that's only this run doubled, plus a 5k on top of it <-- okay, I know that this is not the way of thinking about it one bit...you train so that you can run further and better, so today was a good sign!  And it only requires adding a mile a week for a while.  Since more than eight weeks remain before the half-marathon, I will be just fine.

The other victory from today is that I successfully completed another week of training without any major complaints (one minor one, but that happens).  This is encouraging not only because I feel better about the plan overall, but also because the next two weeks are the same distances and mileage as this week.  So I'll have some time to get accustomed to it.  Victory!

Two runs in one weekend

The first thing that needs to be said is that I did it!  I ran all five planned runs this week.  It's the first time I've stuck to the schedule probably since December and my marathon training.  I wouldn't classify this as a miracle, because I actually am pretty good about staying on schedule most the time -- the past few months were more of an exception than the rule.  But it certainly felt nice to be back in a routine.

No real pain to report, which is great.  A bit of stress on my shins, but nothing unmanageable.  Next week it's a very similar schedule, except that instead of two 4-mile runs, I do one 4-mile and one 5.  Very doable.  Yay!

SATURDAY'S RUN

Let me just say that I destroyed Saturday's 3-mile run.  If runs had the will to live, I robbed mine of it (if that makes any sense).  I actually ran, for real.  Hard.  Fast (okay, not really fast, although at points, I got fast).  This one wound up being along the Graveyard Path again, sort of by accident -- but at least this time I did not get lost.  It was a bit hotter than I would have liked and a bit sunnier than I would have liked (I went at 5:30PM), but there is no doubt in my mind that this was the best bit of running that I have done in a very long time.  Felt good.  It helped that I needed to be finished within a specific time frame, so that was my motivation.  But it is good to know that somewhere there is still the ability to run.

SUNDAY'S RUN

Not nearly as triumphant as Saturday's run, but the key thing was to do it, and I did succeed in that goal.  Also a 3-mile run and I finally figured out the path that I tried to run on Thursday (it's trickier than I thought).  So that is also progress.  And hopefully next time I will not get completely lost.  Today was back to the slower speed, but I think that this was a good idea.  Too much fast will lead to injuries. 

Mostly I am just happy to have actually finished all of my planned runs this week.  Only 14 weeks more!  Okay, that's not quite such an encouraging thought.

I zigged when I should have zagged

Today, I decided to try a new route, one that didn't loop but instead covered four miles.  I was kind of improvising because I had no idea if it would be long enough, but I figured that it was worth a try.  Now that I am back, I mapped my ideal route and it came out to 3.7 miles.  Not bad for guessing.

Except that when I should have zigged at Würmtalstraße, I did no such thing and instead just continued blissfully along, leading me to take a very scenic route that went far, far off of my original plan.  Rather than 3.7 miles, it wound up being 4.8 miles--and a bit more as I tried to figure out where on earth I had put myself by the end of my 4 miles.  However, I did discover some nice running places which are shady and pretty decent.  They are next to the graveyard, but you can't really see that from the road.  Call it the Graveyard Path instead of the garden path.

My time was horrifically awful and I had about a mile's worth of walking afterward to contemplate why.  I'm still not sure.  It's probably not worth dwelling on it.  The good news is that although my time may be slow, this is likely good for avoiding injury (remember, I did have a mile to try and put a positive spin on this).

The other answer, of course, is that no one has ever become a better runner by complaining about pace.  You only become a better runner by working at it, bit by bit, and eventually you will make improvements.  And when I say 'you,' I actually mean 'I.'

More good news: I heard thunder as I was getting back, meaning that I missed any storms.  They were saying all day that it was going to rain and I thought that the weather people had lost their minds or something.  It was totally sunny, all day, until now (it's 8:44pm).  Weather forecasting is just not quite up to par here.