It has been one of those weeks.

We are still in the middle of renovation/remodeling of the house and that is/has impacted us almost to distraction. We understand that patience is the catchword when going through this process, but living out of boxes, doing dishes in the bathroom sink, etc. is getting old.

However, we now have a new deck and front steps, the new kitchen cabinets are installed, the counter-top measuring and delivery dates have been set, so this week has also been a week of big progress.

A few more weeks and we will have most of the projects done.

I am more than ready to get back to a more “normal” schedule and have things settle down around the house. I have a sneaking suspicion that Bennie will be too, he has been protecting the house against invaders everyday for a while now.

Running

The running is getting better and my left leg is starting to feel closer to normal. The dull ache is pretty much gone, unless I do the side-to-side swinging motion i.e. using the weed wacker or attempt to run too fast.

31 miles for the week is pretty much in the ball park of where I want to be and the average pace of 9:00 minute miles feels about right. It means that I am running my easy days easy and not overdoing things. Although I was pretty surprised that my fastest run this week was also my longest – strange indeed.

I was also able to do 5 x 2 telephone pole strides at a decent pace this morning. Nothing super fast, but enough to breath hard. The best thing about it was that my leg didn’t bother, so I feel as though I am progressing pretty good.

Although my right foot has been grumpy since I started running again after this injury and the closer I get to where I want to be with my weekly mileage the more it has been bothering me. I still don’t really know why, but I do know that none of my current daily trainers have made it happy.

Which is strange because my Salomon RA Max v1 were so comfortable the first couple of weeks that I had them and the Adidas Tempo 9s, (the first ones with over 350 miles on them and the second ones about 10 miles) both do not feel right either. The Karhu’s and Epic React Flyknits with over 150 miles on them were not feeling right either.

So I was grasping at straws to figure out what was going on and even tried my Salomon Sense Ride on the road. While they did okay I really hate to use trail shoes for lots of road running, it seems like such a waste, especially when I have so many road shoes laying around.

I figured that I would find something would work. Then I remembered the New Balance Beacons that I had mowed the lawn in without any issues earlier this week.

So I decided to try running in them, read more about here and guess what – the last two runs this week my right foot pretty much stopped complaining.

Guess what shoes I am going to be running in for a while?

Yeah, the Beacons.

They just feel right on my weird feet, so I am going back to what works for me.

Updating the Running Log

I have updated the running log to track the data that I believe is most useful to me in my running.

This is my summary page and it quickly tells me how many miles each of the shoes in my present rotation have, my total monthly mileage, time run, average pace, etc. I also want to keep track of how I am doing compared to my post 60 PBS and will be doing this each month to show whether I am progressing or regressing.

Although I do expect some regression as I get older, just the way it works at this point, but at least I can see it and hopefully that I can slow the slow-down. 😉

The reality is that

The remodel is moving along and will get done, when it gets done, we just have to keep being patient. Once it is done, things will be better and will allow us to age more gracefully in place, but now to get to the end of the remodeling.

Running is going better than I ever expected, my original schedule had me not running until July 15th or August 1st, so being able to run a 30 mile week last week is totally gravy and way ahead of anything that I expected.

I am lucky, but at the same time I tend to believe that an active recovery whenever possible is better for the body than simply sitting on the couch whining, pissing and moaning about not being able to run. Yeah, I push the issue, but this time I did it according to how my body felt and didn’t go too much beyond what it could do too soon.

It seemed to work this time.