This Week in Training & Miscellany

Hello!

I definitely owe a better post than just a training summary, but I think that's all I can muster for tonight.

It's been a busy weekend. It started off a bit badly when I came home from work Friday evening to a mailbox with a door missing. When we moved into our house ~2.5 years ago, our mailbox was on a post that was not properly installed and thus was very flimsy. Our neighbor's mailbox is also in our yard since they are all along one side of the street. Their mailbox was in one of those big orange buckets that you get from Home Depot with rocks and chunks of cement keeping the post upright. Yes-it was quite attractive. So, I decided that it needed to be fixed. I bought some pretty attractive, matching mailboxes and my dad built and installed the post. Perfect. Well, until one week later when I come home from work and our mailbox door is lying in the street. It had broken off. Basically, the hinge is a metal piece that has been molded into the plastic door trim. The force of the mailbox door falling open broke the plastic and thus the door fell off. Luckily the trim came in two color options, so I had 4 parts total. I replaced it with the other color and moved on. Eventually, ours broke again. Now, I should have been more proactive in obtaining new mailboxes or contacting the manufacturer, but my mailbox is not really my number one priority most of the time. It became my number one priority this past Friday, however. When I came home on Friday, the neighbor's mailbox door was missing entirely. I had no more parts to fix it and mail gets delivered on Saturday afternoon. I'm not sure if the mailman would deliver it if the box had no door, but it's probably a bad idea anyway since it's been snowing lately. Naturally, the new mailboxes are less wide and so I had to saw (by hand) the mounting board. Anyway, after much swearing, sawing and frozen hands, the mailbox was replaced.

Saturday night we had a party for Joe's (my husband) work group. We went and played dodgeball (who knew that there were places where you could rent dodgeball courts?). It was actually pretty fun, although I'm quite sore today. Then we had a get together at his manager's house. They are a fun group and it was a good time had by all.

Today we took Butler to the dog wash and gave him a bath. Then we had a friend's Super Bowl party. I don't care about football in the least, but it was fun anyway.

This week was a recovery week for me, so there were some extra rest days and no long run. Here it is:

M Rest
T 4 miles (this was supposed to be 7 miles + striders, but we were getting a "wintery mix"
which made it very difficult to get any traction. The slipping was killing my feet, so I cut it
short and moved the rest of the run to Wednesday, which was supposed to be a rest day. It
was the strangest thing. I've never in my life had my feet hurt like that. It was awful.
W 3 miles plus striders (~9:30 pace minus the striders and a treadmill run)
R 9 miles (~9:30 pace on the treadmill)
F Rest (had planned a dog walk, but the mailbox fiasco took up all my time and energy)
Sa 5 mile recovery run (8:32 min/mile. This is not my recovery pace, but I felt rushed and
ended up running faster than I had intended) + 3 mile dog walk (~20 min/mile). Cross
training: dodgeball.
Su 11 miles (8:39 min/mile)

All in all, not a bad week for a recovery week. Admittedly, the weekend was a bit booze-soaked and full of party food. Oh well-onward and upward!

Time for bed!

Happy Running!

Jen