Remember me?

Hi, remember me, I use to blog a bit and I used to read others and leave witty and insightful comments! Well maybe they were just witty? Either way I used to leave them and I used to write a bit too! Oh well, therein lies the problem of having a vacation, it’s not like you stop work you just do half a week extra before you go and half a week extra when you come back, oh and then there’s the 2-3 evenings you work when you are away..modern life right. Anyway as I write this I on the 60th floor of the Encore Hotel in Vegas, we checked in yesterday after leaving LA around 4pm and getting here about 4 hours later. And so far we have not left the hotel, sleep, massage, spa, monster workout in the gym, in room dining, big tv, nice view…sold!

I am officially too lazy to stand up to take the photo!

Now that being said I have been hitting the gym and today I started Week 4 of the Natural Running Transition, things are improving and despite having a crappy start to the first two weeks of February with the Flu/bronchitis I am getting 4-5 of the 7 a week workouts done, I am actually running three times a week for a whopping 25 minutes! (yeah it’s kinda sad really) but I am really focusing on my form, I am running in my Newtons exclusively and I do actually seem to be getting a little faster. Most runs are sub 7:30 minute pace and a few miles last week were even sub 7:00! So it would seem that there is something to backing off to focus on form, I am also pretty much injury free; at least nothing that a bag of ice doesn’t fix. So there you have it. I have to say that it does not make for interesting reading  and to be honest it’s not that interesting to write! It’s not the yomping adventures of a trail runner that I was writing about two years that’s for sure. So what’s next.

Well the four week mark is half way through the transition plan, from here the focus is on longer runs and keeping up the in between strength and stretching forms I have to say that I have one eye on the calendar, the FIRST Half plan is 18 weeks which is about 4 weeks longer than I can focus for and about 8 weeks longer than my target race! So it might be time to look for an alternative, the problem here is that there is nothing in the Summer as it’s too hot! The Simi Valley Half in June is a maybe but the organizers took a pasting over last years Camarillo Marathon or there is the modestly names America’s Finest City race in August but that’s so far away!

I have also come to the conclusion that I really do like to race and that’s a lot of the drive to run, I have always been goal orientated and without a race at the end of the pipe it seems very easy for the interest level to drop off. So I need to get some things firmed up but until then things are a bit up in the air. I really would like to nail things down for the next 6 months or so so I can broach the subject at home of doing another 100 miler next year!