Last week was one of those weeks that you are glad to see the end of. No, it was not an exceptionally bad week, but it was one of those that you are glad to be able to look at in the rear view mirror.

Monday was the Boston Marathon, which in the past has been a source many of my running woes and usually the place where I descend into “I need to do a marathon madness”, that ends up with me screwing up the old body in some manner or other.

This year was different – I knew that I wasn’t going to get caught up in the madness and was able to enjoy the race and follow many of the runners that I know who did run and finish.

Congratulations to of you who finished Boston, you done good.

Nope, I wasn’t even tempted to start training for a marathon this year and you know something not having that weight be a part of my running feels pretty damn good.

It was also one of those weeks where I was fighting a low-grade something or other that wanted to get worse, but luckily for me didn’t. I wasn’t quite myself, but I wasn’t feeling bad enough to stop doing stuff for most of the week.

We have been working on getting Mary to ditch her old flip phone for a smartphone and seem to almost have her convinced that it “might” be a good thing, but we don’t really have a spare one around the house. She doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on something she “might” not like.

So I asked SD2 for my old Kyocera DuraForce 2 back (she got a new Samsung a while back) and played around with it a bit, set it up more like a Windows phone and had it activated.

Now we have a perfectly good Apple iPhone 7 sitting on the counter waiting for Mary to actually use it. The saga continues.

I managed to keep going until Friday when I just vegged out after sitting in the Ford dealership waiting room for an hour or so. Then the rains came and the lack of sunshine didn’t help how I was feeling either.

Vehicle repairs were a big part of the week. The old Cherokee’s brake lines needed to be replaced again, the chemicals used to keep the roads clear during winter play havoc with metal parts and brakes are rather necessary. Yeah, it needed to be done.

Then on the way home, Mary was driving the Transit and ran over some road debris (which turned out to be a jackknife) and I had to change a tire in the WalMart parking lot on the coldest day of the week and another unplanned trip to the dealership for a tire repair. While taking the lug nuts off, the old right shoulder decided that much torque was not its idea of fun and has been talking to me pretty regularly since.

Something about changing that tire, whatever I was fighting off and the weather, made it so that by Friday afternoon I was pretty much-done fighting and relegated myself to chair duty.

Loads of fun.

Enough whining, how did the running go?

Running

Despite or is that in spite of feeling off most of the week, I was able to get my mileage into the mid 30’s, which is where I want to be. I even managed to squeeze in a nice set of .25 repeats, but no tempo or long run, unless I want to count a nice 7.0 miler as my long run for the week. Errrr No – long runs are supposed to be double-digit.

A very good week of pounding the pavement.

Running Shoes

It is all about my Nike Epic React FlyKnits. I thought about running in other shoes but never got around to actually doing it. Needless to say, I am very happy with how they are working for me. Although if I could change one thing, it would be to have a real tongue versus having the bootie style of upper. However, I am still happy enough with them that I keep reaching for them as my first choice.

My New Balance Beacons are now my primary walking shoes, they have over 300 miles on them running and close to 400 with the walking too. I was noticing both of my ankles starting to bother a bit more when I would run in them and how it stopped when I didn’t wear them. So I put 2 + 2 together and figured out that it was time to retire them as running shoes.

Health

Other than fighting that low-grade whatever I have been feeling pretty good. No major aches or pains that are slowing up my running. Although I do have to really look at what I am eating again…I have noticed that I have been backsliding a bit and going back to my old eating habits which ain’t going to work for me.

The reality is that

While the week doesn’t sound as bad after I actually sat down and wrote about it, I am still glad that it is over and I can move on from it. I think that the low-grade crap that I was fighting was the worst part. It wasn’t enough to knock me down for a day or two, but it lasted all week and made things feel worse than they were.

I am not really doing any kind of a training plan, other than having a weekly running routine for a while and being flexible for the next couple of weeks. I am still debating with myself about what I want to really want to train for over the next few months.

While it will probably be going after a fast for me 5K, I am not happy with the training plans I am seeing and have been debating actually paying for the Hansons version of a 5K training plan or just doing the speed portion of the half marathon plan with a few tweaks.

Which I hope would probably get me ready for most everything from a 5K to a half marathon?

Just gotta think about things a bit more, but the biggest thing is that I do want some guardrails to bounce against, versus just running willy-nilly.

Yeah, I am feeling better and hopefully, the next week will be a lot better.