Two Weeks Off, Now Running Again!

First of all, we had a quiet-ish end to last week as 3-year-old Charlie went to Grandpa's house to "help" with the end of harvest for 2 days. Something UNHEARD OF happened: Charlie fell asleep in his arms as they were combining corn with Logan:

Dead weight! Watching corn being combined *IS* quite hypnotic.


Helping Grandma test her caramel rolls the next morning.

Anyway, I used some of that free time to get in my first run in 13 days. Here's what the last 2 weeks of training look like (noting that 2 days before this calendars starts [Saturday Oct 28th] was the Minneapolis Halloween Half Marathon):

The week right after the race was just strength work, with a 50 minute aqua jog on Saturday. That went fine (as expected, because I'm having ankle issues, and aqua jogging is NO pressure on my ankle). My ankle was still achy, sore, and not getting totally better, so rest wasn't all it needed. It was time to try a bit more.

Then, this past week, I did an easy swim on Monday with a SLOW 500 yard effort in there. The 500 yards was 7:46 (1:33/100). Compare that to the last 4 times that I did a 3x500 workout: I averaged 7:25 for THREE 500s back-to-back-to-back (7:32, 7:30, 7:18, and 7:20 averages).

The purple workouts last week were both 45 mins on my trainer - nothing fancy, just loosening things up.

Thursday was another swim: some 200s that averaged just under 3 minutes. The uptick of use on my ankle was actually starting to make it feel better! Which (I've learned) is the way some of my injuries work.

THEN I RAN TWICE! If you missed my weekend post about finding $102 on that run, make sure to click that link to check it out! My foot was a little achy, but nothing bad. It just hadn't been "used" in nearly 2 weeks. Then 2 days later on Sunday (yesterday), I ran again. I had a LITTLE more effort at times in this run, and my ankle was fine. It's still going to ache probably forever (from that bad sprain I had a few years back), but running doesn't seem to be hurting it.

So I think I'm on to "base building" now. Just easier mid- to long-distance runs, with shorter ones thrown in when I need them.

Oh, and here are 3 more recent Instagram pics:

A bedtime/storytime selfie with the gang.


First grade school photo! #NoTeeth #AllEars


"Helping" rake leaves (by f-ing up my perfect pile).