Running farther, eating better..

Left the office today a little early for my run. It was supposed to be raining by 3 p.m. and then drop into the 40s or 50s from the mid-60s. Instead, it was still sunny at 2. But I didn't want to push my luck, so I bugged out for a run in what turned out to be 70-plus degrees. The sun was actually hot -- in early April!

Focused on form not speed. I am trying to finally, finally embrace certain ideas from Chirunning including running for the joy rather than the accomplishment. Began with an easy 10 minutes like Danny Dreyer suggest and worked on body sensing to see if I could feel tension anywhere. My right ankle where I had all the symptoms of a stress fracture but no fracture last summer was talking at me just a bit. So I focused on relaxing my lower legs and voila, sensation gone. Everything else felt fine.

I still need to work on my downhill form. I have a tendency to pull up off my tilt and let my core go, which puts way too much strain on my back. I am still working to find the balance among length, stride and speed in the downhill. But it'll come.

The run was great but breezy. That's not a complaint. The weather for the last few weeks has been nothing short of amazing.

Along with my efforts to focus my running on the process and not the product, I've been working on dropping a few pounds (like 20) and learning to eat healthy. I tend to get really rigid about my nutrition, drop the weight and then within a year put most of it back on. (Usually, I'm only working to take off 10 but a low back issue packed on the second 10 at Christmas.) So I'm down 8 or 9 lbs in six weeks. It's slow but steady.

The best part about the weight loss is that I'm not being rigid. If I want something sweet, I eat it. If I want something salty, I eat it. I just attention to how much I eat of any one thing and make sure I get a salad every other day at a minimum plus fruit, too. These are two food groups I really neglect. But no more. Bonus: I feel better all overall -- and especially when I'm running. Who'da thought?

Happy to be running

Today I wanted to try 5 min run/1 min walks to see how it felt and if it would speed me up. It didn't go so well. I was exhausted from the get-go. So 3 miles with half-mile runs at a faster pace followed by 1 min walks was harder than I expected, but I made it. It turned into an interval workout of sorts.

The good news I was running, period. There was an 8-year stretch when I couldn't run because of pain. And now I can (thanks to ChiRunning). Everything else is gravy. Plus it was it was 70 degrees and sunny. I was able to work on my form which felt pretty good, but I would have liked to have relaxed more (a big component of CR), but when you can barely breathe and your heart is racing at 175 bpm, it makes it tough to relax. Anyone know a cardiologist who specializes in heart rates that spike in the first 90 seconds of running and don't come back down (even on a slow mile)?

The other good part of today's effort -- the excellent massage I had after the run. I am going to start scheduling all my massages after a hard workout. My calves have been tight since this weekend (biking seems to have aggravated them), but the massage therapist worked good and hard on them. She thinks it might be a lot of lactic acid. So more water -- and less Diet Coke, plus ice and heat after running and we'll see how the calves react to that.

I had my third meeting with a personal trainer today. I'm on my own from here. It's been hard enough to find time for four runs a week, and now I am trying to fit in 4 30-minute weight training sessions set up by a personal trainer. We'll see.