Things involving electricity are, um, exciting when you live in a 115 year old Victorian. First there is the excitement of guessing which of the switches in the fuse box (see? I don't even know if that's the right name for it) turns off what.
Then there's pulling off the old fixture housings & attempting to decode the ancient rat's nest of wire & asbestos that is your electrical system.
That is, in fact, the terminus of the old gas pipe, from back in the days when all lights were gas lights.
Thankfully we didn't die or explode anything, and now we have real, actual light fixtures that are not the bland, boring IKEA ones the house-dresser went with in order to sell it.
I swear I helped. Mostly by passing tools/screws/bulbs/etc. up the ladder.
Next up, I think, is replacing the nasty, cheap old washer & dryer that make the most ungodly squealing noises & leave nasty lint & crap all over our clothes. (Our house was a rental for a long time, & I have a feeling the owners just went with the cheapest functional appliances they could get. On the other hand, the fact that the place needs some work in places & has a bunch of cheap appliances is probably a big part of why we were able to afford it.)
RUNNING!
This week was one of those ones where there are no crises or surprises and everything goes more or less according to plan. I got all of my runs in, and most of them were even reasonably not-awful.
This is remarkable because I haven't had a lot of great runs lately. I'm not generally the type of person to get on the internet at the first sign of trouble and bawl into the void; sometimes things just don't feel right for a day or two for whatever reason, and over the years I've learned that most of the time they take care of themselves in a few days.
But these last few weeks, though. MAN. I won't bore you with all the details but even though I haven't been running all that much or that far & only recently started adding in a few super-gentle hill/speed workouts, it kind of seemed like it was just one thing after another. As a result a lot of my runs have felt unbalanced and awkward and uncomfortable and I've even cut them short here & there. I was actively limping after last Sunday's 12 miler and seriously thinking about just taking a bunch of rest days because I really *really* didn't want to get hurt again.
On Friday I got in with the massage therapist to try to get some of this jankiness worked out. I told him about my skiing fall & how my pelvis & hips had felt kind of messed up & moderately painful ever since. He went to work on me & was like, "Wow, you really made a mess of things, didn't you?" He did a bunch of excruciating (as per usual) work on both hip flexors/psoases (sp?) & SI joints & my right adductor/hamstring, then told me to give it a few days & if it didn't feel normal yet to come back for another, because I had definitely effed up the suspension & he was not surprised that running felt like poo.
Thankfully, the difference was pretty clear and immediate. Friday afternoon I was still sore from all the massage work, but I no longer felt like I was running with a peg leg and broken glass in my back, so winning.
On Sunday I ran 14 miles & decided I was recovered enough to try a "fast finish" & see how it felt. It's been a while, so I didn't want to push things too hard; on the other hand, I'm planning on running a half marathon this Saturday at 8:00 pace & kind of wanted to try out a few miles in that ballpark before then. (Jogging along in the 9:30-10:00 range these days, it always seems absurd to me that I'll be able to crank the pace down by 1.5-2 minutes without utterly sucking wind.) I ran the first 9 easy, then ran 3 at a comfortably fast pace, shooting for around 8:00 or slightly faster.
After a couple of minutes I'd settled into a pace that felt about right, so I was kind of surprised to glance at my watch & see the numbers knocking around between 7:20 & 7:40 (basically HM race pace when I'm in good shape for it). My three fast splits ended up being 7:41, 7:42, & 7:33 (the last mile was a gentle downhill), which was entirely unexpected and dumbfounded me a little. I'd been trying to run as fast as possible without feeling uncomfortable & just settle into that sweet "cruising" feeling that is really my favorite speed to run, and during the last couple of months before NVM that had always amounted to the 7:50-8:10 neighborhood. I haven't done any tempo/threshold training yet & only a tiny bit of strides/hill intervals, so I don't know if that's just continued aerobic improvement, evidence that a tiny bit of speed work goes farther than I think, or just entirely random.
Either way, I'll take it! Like I said, I'm planning on running 8:00 miles at Parkway Half on Saturday (the farthest I've tried to go at that pace since last August), and it would be pretty awesome if it ended up feeling a little easier than I'd been expecting.
Grand Total: 37 miles
- * 21.2 easy
* ~1.8 hill intervals
* 14 long
* 1 strength workout :-/
Monday: Rest. Too much work for karate + kind of not feeling it.
Tuesday: 8 easy. OMG, *such* a relief to have a decent-feeling run for a change!
Wednesday: a.m. strength work / p.m. karate
Thursday: 3.4 warm-up, 9 x .11 hill intervals w/ .11 downhill recovery jogs, 1.6 cool down = 7 total. Ugh. These are still an absolute and total bitch. I meant to write a post about this workout but didn't get around to it. To be honest, though, I don't really have much more to say about it than that.
Friday: a.m. massage therapist / p.m. 8 easy. Sore where he worked on me, but still much improved.
Saturday: Rest.
Sunday: 14 long
Glad to hear that the massage seems to have done the trick. Nice job on your fast finish!
ReplyDeleteJudging from that last run I'm pretty sure the half will be pretty awesome for you. It's great that your masseuse managed to get rid of some of your knots. Nothing better than running without pain!
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