Life happens

I haven't been running a lot.  Oh, I'm running every day, just not far.  And actually, I'm doing more than one mile 5 days a week, but those miles are usually only 3 miles.  So my average weekly mileage has dropped quite a bit.  I also have started running hill repeats again.  I missed one week of hills when I was in Idaho, but I have done this last weekend and the weekend before I went to Idaho.  Those runs are also only 3 miles, and are a little different than the typical hill repeats. 

Typically you run as fast as you can up a hill and then jog or walk back down the hill and repeat. I have done those a couple times in the past, but it doesn't sound fun to me right now, so I changed it up a little. . . .plus, I'm not in the shape I was when I did it before, so I am making it easier until I build up a little hill endurance first. 

Close to my house is a hill, I run up this hill on almost every run I do, but then I'm mostly flat or gradual incline the rest of my run.  Well, the hill I run up is on a busy road, but there is a neighborhood that goes up and down that hill.  In fact, when I was training for the San Juan half a few years ago I ran this neighborhood a lot, up and down the hill.  So that is what I am doing now, up and down the hill through the neighborhood streets.

I'm not sprinting up the hills, just running, but I'm trying not to walk very far down, so I'm mostly running the entire time.  I do walk several yards after I get to the top, but then I run the rest of the way down the hill.  I did this a lot the year I ran the San Juan half, with a long run up a very, very long hill every week.  That was the year I started having problems with my hip and didn't know what it was, so I stopped running for 3 weeks in August of that year (the San Juan half was in June) and ran my second marathon in October.  I often wonder how fast I would have been if I hadn't stopped.  If I would have run under a 4 hour marathon.  Oh well.  Arthritis sucks, but now I take some Aleve and run anyway.  There's nothing I can do about it and I refuse to quit.  At least not yet.

I'm not itching to run a lot at the moment.  I'm kinda ready for my runstreak to be over, but I'm committed to go through 2019, so we'll see what happens in January.  I'm also not itching to run any races.  In 2019 the only one I did was Ragnar, and that's okay with me.  I don't know if I'll do races again.  I don't even know if I'll do a full marathon again.  That goal may be done, not completed, just not important. 

Things change after losing someone close to you.  My focus is different now.

I just found this on an old blog post.  I miss her.  I miss her everyday.