Wicked Weekend

I love mojo. I love when I feel like I've lost it, and then like THAT it's back! Doesn't take much, but it does take a little push in the right direction to jump-start the motivation. Geof and I have decided to find our mojo again, and boy have we found it!

All last week, we rose at the crack-o-dawn to run, did it again on Thanksgiving morning out in Iowa before the big meal, took Friday off, and then on Saturday the most glorious thing happened. We did calisthenics together. And it just got better from there. Geof decided it was high time to get back into pre-KM100 shape and stop feeling so lazy (we have been pretty lazy, in runner-terms of course...not in 'typical' American citizen terms). So we did a nice 15 minute workout, doing some planks that I thought were burning up my abs inside, arm work that emphasized muscles used to carry water bottles that feel like cinder blocks after 80 miles of carrying them, back exercises and shoulder exercises. Wow, that got us warmed up pretty good! So, then we suited up and headed outside for a little over 8 miles along the lakefront in some damn fine weather. After a loop around Northerly Island we headed back and then hit the stairs at Columbus and Wacker to run up and down them a few times. That felt funny, switching from running to climbing, then back to running, but it felt really good, too. It gets better!

When we got home, Geof took to making a kickass fruit/yogurt/cottage cheese smoothie, and oatmeal with raisins and honey, while I cleaned up and then dunked my legs, up to my calves, in a bucket of hot water and epsom salts. We inhaled our breakfast, and man did it feel good to eat so well right after running, rather than a burrito an hour late. I tell ya, the epsom soak felt amazing. As soon as we stopped running (and actually while doing the stairs, on the downs) I felt my heels starting to fire up, all the tendons protesting a little. After the soak, nada. Brilliant.

Today we met some CHUGs out at Waterfall Glen for a run. The weather was not so fine as Saturday's was...raining the whole drive there, but it did stop long enough for us to crank out a dry and cold 9.5 miles. It was a great run, following the trail clockwise, with Geof, Kelly and Ian. David, Kristi and Tony ran up ahead so we didn't spend much time with them. They were flyin'! I felt great the whole time, save for some hip flexor tightness, and when we got home I soaked my feet and calves again in the epsom salt, and Geof prepared our same smoothie and oatmeal breakfast. Delish! We did our calisthenics before we left (adding in push-ups and more ab work), which meant getting up a little earlier, but I was glad we did because I am now in full on lounge mode :)

It feels good to be getting back on track. Eating better, doing weights again, the salt soaks. Makes you feel like a million bucks when you're taking better care. I'm going to get some ART from Dr. Heddles later this week for the ankles/heels to help that process along, then...I have my very first marathon this coming weekend! I'll be running (read: hiking) the Tecumseh Trail Marathon in Indiana with a bunch of the CHUGs. Should be a fantastic time. It's a tough course, so I'm planning on taking it verrrry easy since I'm just now getting back into some miles, and thus will be doing a lot of hiking :)

My classes end in two weeks, so that means great things for my morning runs since I'll have a month off from early morning studying before work!

I smell a hundred miler creeping up...so what's it gonna be? I guess we'll see :)

Crash, out.