Last three days

It's been a busy trip, so I haven't had time to keep up with the running blog.  I could give you a 3-4-1 for the past few days, but that seems like a bit much, so instead I will just summarize. First things first, here is a sample of what I see while running here:

The hills are alive!  But with grapes and trees and such.

My runs generally went quite well.  It was a 4, 3, and 5 to finish off the week, so that is three straight successful weeks.  The calves haven't been giving me any trouble at all, which is great, and I have no new issues to report.  I do have to say that this week's 5-mile was not nearly as nice as last week's.  I wound up in the sun for a lot of it and while it wasn't insanely hot, it was more warm than one might like in this situation.  But I survived, so no big deal.

There have certainly been hills over the past few days...not quite like in the photo, but hills nonetheless.  It's good practice.  I can feel like my muscles are almost getting used to them, which is not to say that I am running them very well, because I am insanely slow.  But it's good practice.  Who knows what I will find in Berlin, which is the next stop on my journey?  Something tells me 'not many hills,' but I guess I will learn soon enough!

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!

Still cool, but much more pleasant

Today it remains cool, but without the rain.  So pretty much perfect!  I ran at 3:00PM.  If you can imagine.  The last time I came even close to running this late was during a 'cold front' in Florida back in November.  And it was still challenging.  Today's run, on the other hand, was just plain pleasant.

The calves are still tight.  I've read a lot of blogs today that tell me basically if you start running a lot, your calves will be tight.  I don't think it's anything more serious.  Shins are not really bugging me (so it's not shin splints) and it's really only when I'm running that I have a problem.  No cramping up or anything.  So we will stay with the schedule for now and hope that this goes away.  I did have something similar happen when I took a break during the winter of 2007, then started running again, so I don't think it's anything to be too concerned with at this point.

It's nice that a 3M run doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore after two weeks of being back in a normal routine.  This is great, since there are plenty of longer runs ahead.  But it is also great because as long as 3M doesn't seem like a big deal, I'll get through this training plan for the half-marathon, I hope!