Y5K #20

Back from vacation means back to jogging:

• Tuesday: Well one thing is for certain: The first run after some time off usually goes pretty well.  After not running for about 10 days, I went out and picked up where I left off, doing 4 jogging sets of 8 minutes each with a minute of walking between each one.  And I went 4.1 miles in 47 minutes total, counting warm-up and cool-down walking. Excluding the warm-up and cool-down, I did around 3.25 miles in 35 minutes. I'd been a little nervous about my knees (and I guess I continue to be) because even while I was on vacation I was still having some knee pain. Some of it I guess could have been due to driving a car to California and back. I don't know. In any case, my knees didn't bother me while I ran tonight. My feet are a little sore, but more in a "maybe I'm going to have a blister or two" kind of way, than in a "I wonder if I have a stress fracture" kind of way, so I guess that's good.

• Thursday: I played volleyball for about 3 hours and really enjoyed myself.  And wasn't quite as sore as the last time I did that, so that was nice.

• Saturday: Did another run of 4 sets of 8 minutes this morning. Actually got out to run early enough that it wasn't even 11 by the time I got done.  Picked a new route based on the fact that I'm going a lot further now than in the past. Mostly downhill on the way out so some good uphill burn on the way back in. And I felt like I kind of took it easy on the way out as well, partly thinking I should pace myself if I had to come uphill on the way back, and partly just getting warm. And my legs felt good pretty much the whole way. Anyway, only did 3.6 miles in 44 minutes.   About 3/4 of the way in I chose to run a yellow light rather than sit and jog at the corner for a whole light cycle and actually had a little left in the tank to get most of the way through the intersection before it turned red. Thankfully the car I was in front of at the time chose not to run me down for my foolishness. :)  Anyway, again my feet are a little sore in that could be a blister some day kind of way, which I can live with for now. Hopefully they'll toughen up a bit if I keep these distances up.  Starting to feel like I could probably manage to run for 27 minutes straight for a 5K if I had to. Maybe I should start looking for something to run in late September/early October.