What I Did on my Running Vacation

Like most marked periods of time, I came up with a list of things I wanted to do on my running vacation:

5. Finish my thesis: I didn’t finish the thing, but I did adjust my topic, do plenty of research, change my topic a bit and start narrowing my focus.

4. Convert Undecideds to vote for Obama: Not only did I score a couple of undecided voters for the Obama camp, I worked hard enough to educate two Nobamas to the good guys. And you can still donate to the campaign, using the link to the right →

3. Gathering my friends to recreate the Feist video: I wish...

2. Heal my ITBS: check!

1. Make decorating strides with my hous: One living room down, a bedroom to go!

The break, which started Sept. 29, the day after my recovery run from the Akron Marathon, was nice and not really a break at all. I rode my trainer-racked bike 5-6 days each week and renewed my religious vows to yoga and even more so to Pilates.

All that keeping up made my return to training this evening pretty swell. I ran four miles at 9:20/mile and felt great the whole run, despite the blustering winds and the chilly temps for which I’m not ready.

Lucky for me: I live by the lake, which makes the air not-so-cold.

That’s speaking very relatively.

I hit some fatigue points along the way—my body’s way of saying “WTF? I thought we gave this up, girl?” But I persisted and pushed past two very premature walls and cruised to the end feeling grateful for my health and ability to get back to it.

(I was also grateful for the Nike running tights I bought on clearance this summer. They totally neutralized the heat in my legs and the ice in the air. Surprisingly, too, they felt better than the Mizuno tights after whom I'd planned to name my firstborn. If only I had found my gloves!)

After last year’s injury and this year’s ITBS, I’ve learned to appreciate the running break. There’s something to taking off a few weeks and resuming your training anew. My leg doesn’t hurt and my body feels rested. It almost makes me want to have a healthy approach to training!

This bout with training, though, is an in-betweener: I’m warming up for the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day (I’ll also be cooking my first 14-person dinner that day), after which I’ll take another couple weeks rest before I get in the long haul. I’m going to race in Cleveland this May. And I might just do another marathon.

Speaking of marathons, muchos congratulations to Landon, who ran a stellar 3:58:26 at Columbus a couple weeks ago. I watched him cross checkpoints online, and I was awed at his steady pace and ability to hit negative splits from the 10K on. And as the projected finish time approached, Neil and I sat in the living room, wildly cheering Landon to the end... and then he beat his expected arrival by at least two minutes. Now that’s the way to run a race!

And that was what I did on my running vacation.