It kind of sucks when the quarter, month and the week end on the same day. Oh sure I could do separate posts, but that would be re-hashing stuff too much and make it boring for me to write and you to read, so I get to a write one longer post and bore you that way.

Lots of stuff happening in this post – more than enough.

Let’s start with the week in review first.

What has been going on?

Well I did make my 30 miles, but as a result of reading the Passion Paradox this week, I decided to stop attempting to do something that I really do not enjoy – training for long races. It isn’t who I am or what I enjoy, although I do enjoy just getting out and running longer runs (I know that is an oxymoronic statement, but it is what it is).

I have always preferred shorter distances and have decided to go in a different direction. So this is my last week of doing the Hansons Half Marathon Method for a while. You can read more about that decision here.

Unfortunately, the week didn’t start out so well, Monday’s run was cut short, due to the RunFasts killing my right foot and it bothered enough that I had to take a red-letter day off. Not what I wanted and it was the first day in a long time that I have had to take a day off because something hurt on my body too much to get a run in. This was also about the same time I was finishing up the Passion Paradox, so my fragility also was weighing on my mind when I made some of the choices in the above paragraphs.

Also my right ankle has been bothering a bit over the past couple of weeks, but I have figured out part of the reason. I have been wearing the Beacons a little too much and need to vary the shoe rotation a little more. While I can run in neutral shoes, I have learned over the years that I seem to do best in shoes with a light stability element. I just have to remember that.

Luckily neither ouchie was anything serious and I was able to have some really great runs the rest of the week. Yesterday was supposed to be a 13.0 mile long run, but I decided that it was better served being a day off, since I had my 30 miles for the week and my miles in for the month, along with the idea that I will be changing my training focus going forward.

So while it was a good, week, it wasn’t a great week.

Oh yeah, I did sort of, kind of, well I did move pretty much back to the Microsoft realm, which you can read more about here. It wasn’t what I had planned on doing, but I do prefer typing on the new-to-me Lenovo Thinkpad X230T that I got last week and when we had to reset Mary’s computer, well we no longer had the licenced disk for what she was using (yeah, her computer is that old), so we opted to go the Office 365 subscription route, which pushed me further into the Microsoft silo.

Since I had to subscribe to Office, I will be getting rid of Apple Music and going back to iTunes – not my favorite bit of software, but it will setup playlists and stuff on music that I already own and I don’t have to worry about yet another subscription.

March – looking back

As part of changing over my tech silo, I am also in the process of changing over from Numbers to Excel and have to update my running log. It takes a little bit to readjust my thinking from how Numbers does things to Excel’s way – yeah they are both spreadsheets, but with shall we say different ways of getting to where you want to go.

Each month I learn more about myself and through my readings more about running in general. So March has been about tweaking and changing things to let me enjoy my running more and in the case of technology write more easily without the frustration factor getting too high.

Before this week, I was bumbling along nicely with the Hansons Half Marathon method, but noticed that I was starting to get very, very fatigued, while accumulated fatigue is part of the method, how I was feeling was beyond what I was able to keep up with and I decided to pause the plan and take a cut-back week. It helped, but made me realize that my time goals for the half might have been rather ambitious for a distance that I don’t really enjoy racing. Since I have only raced a half marathon once in my life.

As a result of the tweaking, I decided to stop the Hansons Half Marathon method training and move back in distance to the 5K. Mary is a lot happier with that decision, since it means that I will have more time for other things and not be nearly as tired all the time. She gets a bit worried when I try to do too much, well at least in her eyes too much.

March was still mostly on the treadmill and while it is a great tool that allows me to keep running when the conditions outside suck, I am starting to get antsy about getting outside more.

It has been a long winter and while it is not officially Spring, it is still pretty damn chilly outside and there is still a lot of snow left lying around, so I have yet to run in short/t-shirt attire for running. Soon I hope!!!

Quarterly

I am going to show my quarterly report for the past 5 years to see how things measure up compared to how I have been running in previous years. It is kind of nice to see where you have been and compare it to where I am now.

This is the best I have run in the first quarter (Jan-Mar) in the last 5 years. I really do believe that using the Hansons Method was a good thing and helped me stay more consistent than I have been recently. Now to keep it going, but to stay consistently in the 35-40 mpw range which seems to be my sweet spot right now.

Running Shoes

I have pretty much had a rotation of New Balance Beacon and adidas Tempo 9 #1 for a couple of months now. However, when I look back since I got the Beacons they have been my primary running shoe – more because I have been running mostly on the treadmill and they do better than any shoes I have used in a long time on the ‘mill. I have used both shoes for running outside and while both work great, if the roads are clear and dry I prefer the Beacons, but if the conditions are a bit nasty the Tempo 9s are the best choice.

One thing is that I have to start running more in the Tempo 9s, I have a feeling too much of a good thing i.e. running in the neutral Beacons is giving my right ankle a bit of a twinge. Nothing serious, so I will probably run mostly in the Tempos for a bit to let things calm down.

When I tried to run in my Reebok RunFasts earlier this week – I had been saving them for Spring and Summer 5K’s. They just about killed my right foot and I had to stop a run earlier than I planned and was forced to take the next day off as the foot was still a bit too sore. They will now go away, when my feet feel like that on and after a run, the offending shoes do not stay around very long.

Also my old Adios 3s went the way of the give-away pile, the area where the mice did their dirty work let go and I had worn away the outsole to the midsole in the forefoot, so I didn’t want to run in them too much after I figured out those things.

Which means that I am back to either using my Beacons as my go-fast-for-me shoe or digging way deep under the bureau and getting out my Green Silence. Right now I don’t really want to go out and buy a pair of race day or go faster shoes. There are too many great shoes out there and I am not sure which ones are going to meet my needs going forward, so I will wait a bit to see what I really want.

Update: After doing some more thinking, I remembered that I have a pair of Skechers Razor 2s out in Clifford, that I got from Sam W last May. There were a couple of things that I didn’t like about them and I put them in our van as emergency run shoes and promptly forgot about them. The few runs I did in them, I ran well, but there was a bit of rubbing against the bottom of my ankle bones, but I figured if I put in a bit thicker insole and give them a chance to break in they should be fine. So maybe I have my answer, without having to get another pair of running shoes right away.

I am planning to switch to the adidas Tempo 9 #2 that I have waiting to be used once #1 get over 400 miles. I have a feeling that they could go further than that, but with 2 more pair waiting in the wings, I will go with new and not worry about the niggles that might come with an older shoe. I figure 400 miles is excellent mileage for me to get on a pair, especially since there have only been 2-3 that have made that many miles for me over the last 10 years.

What I am really attempting to do is cut-back on the number of running shoes that I buy this year. This is self-imposed because I know that I bought way too many pair of running shoes last year, when I got carried away with the prices on Ebay and Amazon. This year I just want to find the shoes that work well enough for me and keep them until they are used up versus the constant hopping around that I have done over the years.

The Reality is that

Sometimes I have to go backwards to go forward.

My running is in a really good place, I have a nice base built up due to using the Hansons Method, but at the same time racing longer races, if I am honest have never really appealed to me. I like the 5K and an occasional 10K race, but after that running longer distances is for pleasure, not racing.

Weird I know, but hey I admit it I am rather odd at times.

My running shoe rotation is pretty solid and while I am whittling away at the shoes in the house, the ones I am keeping are the ones that actually are working for me. Something that I need to focus on when I do go out to get new running shoes.

I had been a Windows guy for several years with an occasional foray into the other tech silos, but when I got to reading too many articles on the web about things they were doing in Windows 10, I overreacted. No, I am not all that crazy about some of the directions Microsoft seems to be taking their Company (becoming a bit more like Google in some respects) and that when I use their products is seems I am becoming more of the product than the customer. However, I also am not naive and know that all the major companies use our data for their own ends.

It also just happens that Microsoft is what most everyone else in the house uses and I am the tech guy so, I might as well get my brain wrapped back around using their stuff, versus being all over the place. I plan to keep my iPhone and iPad, but I gotta admit it is kind of nice to be back to using a Windows-based laptop. Especially this old Thinkpad X230T – I do really like it better than my iPad Pro and I liked that a whole lot.

April is here, the winds of change are roaring through the trees and the snow is going away. We now have to work on the small pond in front of SD2’s house and get the yards in shape after a pretty tough winter. So the extra time I will have by changing my training to focus on the 5K, has already been spoken for.

Not that I get to sit all that much.