Sunday, November 30, 2008

Limping along

The weather has certainly been much more conducive to running here lately but unfortunately not for me. My title pretty much says it all, I'm still hobbling around getting a few miles in, but it's not very pretty. We had a beautiful sunrise on Saturday morning that this photo does not do justice to. The color of the rising sun was a deep orange-red which lasted for several minutes but just doesn't show here. I should have played with the exposures but the time window was very short.
We found time to put up our outdoor Christmas decorations this weekend but haven't turned the lights on yet; that has to wait until Dec. 1, the 1st official day of the holiday season in our books. I've been running by the 'Crazy Christmas House' in our town (doesn't every place have one?) and they're also set to go, but not yet powered up. They light up the whole block and draw folks from all over and I'll post some shots when they do.
I'm making some progress with the 100 pushup challenge having just completed a repeat of week 5 (level 1). My latest max test was 39 logged here and I'll be re-attempting week5 (level 2) in the coming week. Progress is slow but I can feel the difference in my shoulders and skinny arms already!

Oh yeah, the running or lack thereoff went poorly this week as all ideas of following a training plan went to the back burner. After a failed Sunday long run of only 7 miles and a rest day on Monday the rest of the week was a series of short easy runs of only 5-6 miles. Total of 6 days running and 35 for the week. Today (Sunday) was a very easy 10 miles in 2 loops from home and the legs felt OK at first but were doing their usual complaining over the last 2 miles.

I'm being forced into a corner and so stretching and strengthening are taking place every day and I now have some free weights to help me with a couple of exercises as shown in the latest edition of Running Times. There are lots videos on the net such as this one with weights and this one using an exercise ball that looks difficult. I just need to narrow it down to a few that work for me, correct the imbalance in my leg muscles and don't make things any worse in the meantime.

That's all for now. Hope to have a more positive outlook on training by next weekend or poor (quiet) Andrew will get lonely all by himself chasing the Boyden moose(s). In the meantime have a good week and study/work hard because Christmas is coming soon!

6 comments:

Ewen said...

It's hard to get the colours just right. Take heaps of shots would be my tip. It does look beautiful.

The one with the ball looks good (if difficult). There are many others worth trying. Another I like is a simple front 'plank', then slowly raise one leg, move slowly to the side, then back and down.

Good luck, and I hope it's not long before you're chasing those moose again.

Unknown said...

After all of the years of knee and legs problems and pain, I finally found a mix of stretches that have really made a huge difference for me. The most important thing is that I do them after every single run. It's time consuming, but it's worth it to run pain free.

Thomas said...

Those videos look pretty good - apart from the music that is.

Unknown said...

Well done on the pushups. I'll be repeating week 4, level 3 this week. I am interested to see what my max will be at the end of the week. I hope you get back to the non-limping running soon.

Garry said...

Mike,
Nice photos as usual. Always enjoy them. Take care of the hamstrings and listen to your body!

Garry said...

Mike,
Nice photos as usual. Always enjoy them. Take care of the hamstrings and listen to your body!