Happy Friday

Happy happy joy joy, there's no work tomorrow! No official work. I plan on a fabulous little run (6 miles? 8 miles?) with Anita and then I'm going to help my mom with her paperwork and filing, since I've been incredibly lax in that department for the past month or so. I was too tri busy and tri tired that I wasn't even getting my own stuff done. Maybe after that I'll do my own filing, but that completely erases the whole "no work tomorrow" plan.

Last night Olivia and I continued what we're hoping are regular after-work runs. I was rightly concerned because the heat had returned. When I went outside at about noon it was nice; warm, light breeze. When I left work it was over 90 degrees and still. Ouch, not great running weather. I briefly considered bagging the whole thing but decided that was too wimpish even for me. Instead I told Olivia that we'd just run easier than we had on Monday. Great theory, not so great in practice.

We ran the same flat trail run as Monday and at the turnaround I looked and we had averaged about 15 seconds faster than on Monday. No wonder I was gasping for air. We took a longer walk break to cool down, then started running even faster. Again determined not to wimp out I said nothing, but finally about 3 long blocks before the finish I said we had to take a very short walk break again. We did, then finished up even faster! Olivia said she felt great, I was gasping too hard to say anything.

I know I couldn't do any distance at that speed but it's fun running balls out for short times. I'll look at those runs as my weekly speed work, although just running at your limit for 3 miles isn't technically speed work (I think the technical term for it is "dumb"). Hopefully it will still translate to faster running on the long runs when I'm not pushing myself to the edge.

Last night I knit for the third night in a row, for the first time in months. I'm loving knitting again, just like I'm loving running again. I can see myself getting back into the run/knit run/knit run/knit don't-do-anything-else pattern very easily. I'm going to have to make a point to continue cross-training because I think that's what is helping my knee be strong and healthy. At least for the foreseeable future I'll continue the hard core exercises (pun intended) that my therapist embellishes each time I see him. Right now my therapy exercises are taking over an hour again and that's ignoring any knee related exercises.

So what's that about not having to work tomorrow?