I made it through my 20 minute run yesterday, but man do I feel it today! My lower legs were pretty sore through the run, so I am not really all that surprised…and my right ankle was very, very angry afterward. Ice and Advil seem to have helped that, though, as it doesn’t hurt at all today. My leg muscles are another story. Especially my calves and even my upper legs. YAY! That means I was working the right places.
Later (if it ever stops raining) I am going to take the Moo-dog for a walk through the neighborhood to try to loosen things up without over-using those muscles. Moo will like getting out, too.
Breathing – I plunked down some coin and changed up the cat litter (again). I noticed that I was having trouble breathing when I was upstairs (even when not running). The other day when it was sunny, I noticed that everything up there is covered with a layer of litter dust. I recently switched varieties because I could get a giant bag of this stuff at Costco, however, between the dust and the perfumes in the new litter, my allergies were going haywire. After doing some reading online, I decided to give World’s Best Cat Litter and Nature’s Miracle Cat Litter a try. The combo is reported to make for excellent clumping and odor control. Both are corn-based and the Nature’s Miracle also uses enzymes to breakdown the odor. (I use their stain/odor remover fluid by the gallons around the house – naughty kitties and poor doggies with bladder issues.) So far it seems to work well and there was no noticeable dust when I filled the pans. We’ll see.
I was also excited to discover that I can easily run a 3.1 mile course within my neighborhood (rather the course fits easily into the neighborhood…we’ll see how easy it is to actually run it). As I am near the end of the C25K program I’ve thought more and more about where to run outdoors…the problem around here is that the main roads are small, two-lane state highways that are used by semi-trucks on a regular basis (along with regular traffic) and they don’t have sidewalks or good shoulders in most places. My neighborhood has pretty low traffic and sidewalks to use when necessary. There are also hills. Some serious hills. While that sort of intimidates me, it also makes me appreciate that they are available so close to home for training.
Once I finally get into longer runs, I think I can head over into Neil’s neighborhood. It is a bit flatter overall and much larger which should make for some good long loops in there…I hope. We’ll see. I guess worst case I can run my neighborhood like a track course looping through several times (how boring is that?!?!). At least I have options.
After tackling that 20 minute run, I have no qualms about week six. Day 1 – 5 run/3 walk/8 run/3 walk/5 run; Day 2 – 10 run/3 walk/10 run; Day 3 – 25 min run. After that it is simply a week of 25 min runs, 28 min runs and 30 min runs the last week. Then, it is time to take things outside.
I also need to start incorporating strength exercises to my non-run days…blech.
QUESTION: Should I wear my running shoes for the brisk walks with the dog on my non-running days, or should I invest in a separate pair of shoes for that? Does anyone have a personal preference around this type of situation?
Swimming Upstream 