Every Wish That We Put Into Motion.... (comments welcome!)

@Herding_Cats I know very little about cross country but I'm also curious if the course terrain they end up racing is different than where they're practicing. I can imagine that would have an effect as well. I hope your DS can find joy in it!
 
@Herding_Cats I know very little about cross country but I'm also curious if the course terrain they end up racing is different than where they're practicing. I can imagine that would have an effect as well. I hope your DS can find joy in it!
They do very little road/track running during the season. Even when they do 200s and 400s they run them on our home course, so it's not a surface issue.
As an example: DS2 (who is having a great year) ran 19:45 at our course in late August. On Tuesday, almost 2 months later, he ran 20:02 on the same course. Our home course is a PR course. We usually host Regionals because of this. How do you lose 17 seconds when you're in better shape? (Granted, this was 3 days after he ran 19:19, and had been doing 6am drivers ed for 2 weeks, and missed a day of school to sleep, etc.) But even seniors this year have only broken PRs from last season once or twice, and they also run track, so they're IN SHAPE. It's just been very odd.
 
I'm going to have to suck it up and order myself a running vest. I've been borrowing DS2's (nike aeroloft) and I really like it, but I wish it was looser at the waist, which I think the women's cut might do that for me. Also, I wore a pair of UA coldgear run pants OVER my leggings yesterday and it was fantastic. I got them out of their "outlet" section when they were running a coupon for an extra 40% off so the price was tolerable. I do wish they had a different pocket because with a case my phone is too bulky for the "speedpocket" so I end up using my SPI belt. I've worn these for all of our cold XC meets, but not for actual running, and while it definitely feels different from the absolute freedom of tights, not going numb made things more enjoyable. What wasn't enjoyable? 40 degrees, wind, and off and on rain.

Friday: 1mi WU + 3x (0.5mi HM pace [105/30 intervals] +4min walk) + 1mi CD. So this is a workout instead of "just" a run, which I don't think I have very many of these because over the summer they flared up my PF/achilles stuff. It was a nice change from just running ___mi easy/LR. Oh and look! My VO2max went back up a point. It dropped during my HM last month and didn't recover until today.

I ran my warm up, and that takes me to a section of pretty flat road, and I have a good visual marker for where 0.25mi is from the stop sign, so I just run out and back from there and then I'm exactly 1mi from home. Very handy. The only "difficult" part of this workout is dealing with my phone interval timer, and the run/walk intervals PLUS the walk interval, and then being able to start the next interval on a run. So I ended up taking my phone out of my belt a lot to pause and restart the timer, which slowed things down and I usually just stood there for the last 10-15sec of the walk interval so I could shove my phone back in, zip the pocket closed and be ready for the run interval. Not a perfect system, but it worked. My WU and CD paces were 13:31 and 13:39. Still a little too fast, but I really am trying to slow them down more. My HM pace attempts (I thought for some reason this should be 11:30, but now I see it should have been 11:39) were 11:16, 11:20, and 11:27.

Saturday: I will bask in my day off.
 
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Oh hey tired legs! I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon. Maybe next week, but not this week.

Sunday: another cold/rainy run. 5mi easy, 45/30 intervals. 13:55 avg pace (finally!!) and I only spent 0:44 of the whole run above zone 3 for my HR. An all around win.

Monday: more cold/rain/wind so I opted for the treadmill today. 4mi easy, continuous with a 1min walk break at the beginning of each mile. Got through almost half of the first Hunger Games movie. Legs were tired, and a little more tight than usual. 14:12 pace and I’m not sure why because I set the speed 0.1 faster than usual! Maybe I used a slower walk pace than usual? Not sure.

I’m trying to not think about my 10 miler coming up on Sunday. Not because it’ll be hard, but because it’ll take so long.
 


The precipitation has turned white and chunky this morning. All signs have pointed to an early winter lately, and I'm soooo not ready for it. It's basically rained for 3 days here, so none of it's going to stick, but still. Eww.
 
It’s 21°F at my house. I don’t know who requested that we skip fall and go right into winter, but I’d like to trap them on It’s A Small World for a few hours 😆😆
right?! We went from 80s to 40s in a matter of days here, and that's saying something when we are next to Lake Michigan to moderate things. Thankfully it's supposed to warm back up to more normal 60s this weekend.


In all honesty, we usually get our first "chunky rain" some time during the 3rd week of October, so it's not a surprise. But the fact that it's not just 5min of it, and that other areas near us (further inland) have gotten it a few times this week.
 
The precipitation has turned white and chunky this morning. All signs have pointed to an early winter lately, and I'm soooo not ready for it. It's basically rained for 3 days here, so none of it's going to stick, but still. Eww.

It’s 21°F at my house. I don’t know who requested that we skip fall and go right into winter, but I’d like to trap them on It’s A Small World for a few hours 😆😆

In all honesty, we usually get our first "chunky rain" some time during the 3rd week of October, so it's not a surprise. But the fact that it's not just 5min of it, and that other areas near us (further inland) have gotten it a few times this week.
See, and this is why I can never live up north...
 
Tuesday: rest

Wednesday:
1mi WU + 4x (0.5mi HM pace [105/30 intervals] +4min walk) + 1mi CD. On the treadmill because I'm sick of running in 40 degrees and rain. Soooo, ummm, I did my intervals wrong on this workout last time I did it. I set them for 1:15/0:30 and it should have been 1:45/0:30. Oops! My treadmill changes paces very smoothly, but slower than I'd like, so this wasn't my favorite (and one of the reasons I've been running continuous for my "regular" runs on it) but the important thing is that I completed it. AND finished the first Hunger Games movie.
I'm building a watchlist on Prime and Disney+ (and have realized that I have a whole lot of movies with Jennifer Lawrence and Hugh Jackman) and Netflix is a trusted standby with at least 1 if not 2 seasons of Call the Midwife for me to catch up on. It's almost full-time treadmill season for me, so I'll be spending a lot of quality time with my treadmill between now and January.

If anyone has suggestions for things to watch I'm definitely open to suggestions. I don't generally enjoy really violent stuff, and horror is not my thing. I tried Parks and Rec and I just can't get into that type of show either. I've got the remaining 3 Hunger Games movies, Ms Marvel, a bunch of X-Men movies and Logan, Greatest Showman, Hamilton (which I feel like I need to watch with captions on so I miss less of the sung dialogue), Love and Thunder, and Deadpool 1 & 2 (because there's never enough time to watch these in the evening after DD goes to bed and I'm definitely not watching them with her in the room and awake.)
 
Tuesday: rest

Wednesday:
1mi WU + 4x (0.5mi HM pace [105/30 intervals] +4min walk) + 1mi CD. On the treadmill because I'm sick of running in 40 degrees and rain. Soooo, ummm, I did my intervals wrong on this workout last time I did it. I set them for 1:15/0:30 and it should have been 1:45/0:30. Oops! My treadmill changes paces very smoothly, but slower than I'd like, so this wasn't my favorite (and one of the reasons I've been running continuous for my "regular" runs on it) but the important thing is that I completed it. AND finished the first Hunger Games movie.
I'm building a watchlist on Prime and Disney+ (and have realized that I have a whole lot of movies with Jennifer Lawrence and Hugh Jackman) and Netflix is a trusted standby with at least 1 if not 2 seasons of Call the Midwife for me to catch up on. It's almost full-time treadmill season for me, so I'll be spending a lot of quality time with my treadmill between now and January.

If anyone has suggestions for things to watch I'm definitely open to suggestions. I don't generally enjoy really violent stuff, and horror is not my thing. I tried Parks and Rec and I just can't get into that type of show either. I've got the remaining 3 Hunger Games movies, Ms Marvel, a bunch of X-Men movies and Logan, Greatest Showman, Hamilton (which I feel like I need to watch with captions on so I miss less of the sung dialogue), Love and Thunder, and Deadpool 1 & 2 (because there's never enough time to watch these in the evening after DD goes to bed and I'm definitely not watching them with her in the room and awake.)

Warning: TV junkie here! I also use guilty pleasure shows as bait for treadmill runs. A few suggestions you might like:

Derry Girls -- A hilarious and heartfelt Irish sitcom set in the 90s around a group of high school friends. It is great 90s nostalgia mixed with the political background of the IRA and all that was going on in Ireland and Northern Ireland at that time. Turn on subtitles as the accents are pretty thick. These are good for short runs as they are just 30 minutes and, being BBC, short seasons.

Schitt's Creek -- I almost hesitate to recommend this as it's a bit snarky like Parks & Rec, but give it a try. It takes a minute to settle into the tone of the full series, so give it the whole first season. If it hasn't hooked you by that season finale, it's probably not your thing.

Outlander -- Basically a romance novel on screen, which I normally hate, but there's a time travel element and a lot of it is set in Scotland. The history is pretty accurate and the costumes are incredible. A total guilty pleasure show that I save only for the treadmill.

After Life -- This may be a love-it-or-leave-it but it's super dry, dark humor from Ricky Gervais. It's about grief, and is so amazingly heartwarming but also a little sad. The whole series is out now so you can binge the whole thing if you really get into it.

Sprung -- This one is on Freevee, which is a free channel owned by Amazon. It's by the same guy who did My Name is Earl and Raising Hope. Again, may not be your thing but I found it hilarious and sweet. And I LOVE Garrett Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton. It's set at the start of the pandemic and is about a group of minor criminals who get let out early due to Covid. The main character is a good guy who got 26 years for selling weed in the 90s thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing, so there's a bit of culture shock and fish out of water, and a whole lot of hilarious commentary on the dumb things we all did early on in the pandemic that we thought were making us safer. Again, this one is 30 minute episodes and just one season, so it's a quick watch and easy to string a few back to back as needed.

Ted Lasso -- If you have Apple TV this is probably the best show in the past few years. On the surface, it's about a midwest football coach from a small college who gets hired to coach a soccer team in the US, but it is SO much more!

I've also been rewatching old sitcoms like Scrubs, which holds up fairly well.
 
There's a tv in my office that shows a live weather radar map of the US and today someone commented about how brutal it's been in Michigan lately. My sympathies are with you!

Fortunately for my running, we've had a dry fall here so far. 🤞
 
Warning: TV junkie here! I also use guilty pleasure shows as bait for treadmill runs. A few suggestions you might like:

Derry Girls --
Tried an episode of it and I never really got into it. Does it need a few episodes to get going? Nicola Coughlin is pretty great, so maybe it needs another try?
Schitt's Creek -- I almost hesitate to recommend this as it's a bit snarky like Parks & Rec, but give it a try. It takes a minute to settle into the tone of the full series, so give it the whole first season. If it hasn't hooked you by that season finale, it's probably not your thing.
I think DH has watched some of this as a "have it on but not watch it" show.
Outlander -- Basically a romance novel on screen, which I normally hate, but there's a time travel element and a lot of it is set in Scotland. The history is pretty accurate and the costumes are incredible. A total guilty pleasure show that I save only for the treadmill.
HAHAHHA! I've read most of the books and I kind of gave up watching it after season 4 or 5 because that's also where I got tired of the same cycle of events happening to the next generation.
Tangentially, because *romance novels on screen* Virgin River was completely butchered in the Netflix adaptation. I'm so annoyed because it was actually kind of a sweet (albeit a little syrupy) story and the book series on it's own went on to focus on OTHER people in the town as main characters with Mel/Jack in the background but the adaptation basically ruined that.
After Life -- This may be a love-it-or-leave-it but it's super dry, dark humor from Ricky Gervais. It's about grief, and is so amazingly heartwarming but also a little sad. The whole series is out now so you can binge the whole thing if you really get into it.

Sprung -- This one is on Freevee, which is a free channel owned by Amazon. It's by the same guy who did My Name is Earl and Raising Hope. Again, may not be your thing but I found it hilarious and sweet. And I LOVE Garrett Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton. It's set at the start of the pandemic and is about a group of minor criminals who get let out early due to Covid. The main character is a good guy who got 26 years for selling weed in the 90s thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing, so there's a bit of culture shock and fish out of water, and a whole lot of hilarious commentary on the dumb things we all did early on in the pandemic that we thought were making us safer. Again, this one is 30 minute episodes and just one season, so it's a quick watch and easy to string a few back to back as needed.
Oh those sound promising! Thanks!
Ted Lasso -- If you have Apple TV this is probably the best show in the past few years. On the surface, it's about a midwest football coach from a small college who gets hired to coach a soccer team in the US, but it is SO much more!

I've also been rewatching old sitcoms like Scrubs, which holds up fairly well.
We do NOT have apple TV, and I've heard so many great things about Ted Lasso that it's tempting to try to find a free-to-start subscription just to binge it.
And I also like watching old stuff when I don't really need to pay attention; we watched all of Cheers and most of Friends last winter and have started on Seinfeld as our "time filler" show. I also enjoy watching How I Met Your Mother re-runs.
There's a tv in my office that shows a live weather radar map of the US and today someone commented about how brutal it's been in Michigan lately. My sympathies are with you!

Fortunately for my running, we've had a dry fall here so far. 🤞
It's been SO WET. And cold. And then it got super windy up here on Monday and Tuesday, so much so that we had enough power lines down that the schools lost power and the kids got sent home early, and then we lost power for about 12 hours on Tuesday night (hurray for a back up generator!) My BIL was at my nephew's football game last night in an area that's in one of the "snowbelts" and it had snowed enough that the whole field was white and they were shoveling the yardage lines so the kids could play.
This morning it rained, snowed a little, and tomorrow it's going to be in the mid-60s, so it looks like maybe things will settle down to normal soon.
 
Definitely give Derry Girls a few more episodes. And it's 100% worth doing a free trial for Ted Lasso!
 

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