Window of Opportunity

I started running semi-seriously when I was in my teens, in high school. I wasn't on the track or cross country teams; rather, it was something I did because I had given up "team" sports because I loathed the sports girls cliques at my HS. You could be a team MVP and if you weren't part of a clique, you might as well not exist in the eyes of your teammates. I learned this the hard way at a summer training camp and quit after that season. So, I had energy to burn. My father was running at the time, so I figured, why not? We would run together on Sundays, usually, but the rest of the week went our separate ways. One thing we noted, which seemed to hold true about 360 out of 365 days a year - it seemed to NEVER rain between 6 and 7 am, our usual run time. Rest of the day and/or night could be complete crap, but there always seemed to be a break around that time of day. If there wasn't - well, that was nature's way of telling you it was time for a day off.

It still seems to me that I can almost always catch a weather break if I need one, and I sure got one this morning, a nice big window of opportunity for my run. Before the run? Pouring rain and wind. After the run? Pouring rain and wind. During? Wind, but no rain. I can deal with that.

I like the way the runs are going. They've been stretching over the allotted half an hour, mainly because my routes tend to be random so I never quite know where I'll finish up. Rather than walking out the quarter, half mile (or whatever - I've stood by the no measuring rule), I just run until I'm almost home and then walk a block or so as a cooldown. I think I'm on my third week of running - for whatever reason I didn't mark a calendar so I'm not entirely sure - and the rough plan was to do the easy half hours for a solid month and then start looking at time, distance, and pace. That still seems like a good plan, although I'm really not to anxious to know my pace right now. (Although, hey, I guess the progression game plays as well on the road as it does in the gym, so wherever I am is a starting point.)

NROL/W Stage 4 did start on schedule on Friday. As much as I wasn't looking forward to going back to the "same" workouts as Stage 2, the addition of the third set makes them feel different; in fact I've gotten a bit of unexpected soreness from both the A and the B workouts. It's all good, though!