Well I guess it is time to write again, well past time. Looks like it has been a couple of months since I wrote anything here. I haven’t been running a whole lot lately. The problem has been me, I keep letting other things get in the way of running and embracing excuses for not doing it. For the most part the days when I haven’t run have been merited, but I have had several 2-3 week stretches where I haven’t run at all. The only thing to do is get up and run, so that is what I will try to do.

This last week I have been doing pretty well with facing the cold and getting out to run. Today’s run was the chilliest of all of them and it looks like the cold temps are here to stay in the NW, we are getting close to winter so it is nothing to chastise. Just embrace it and bundle up. Today’s run went really well, despite the chill I stripped off my warm layer after about a mile. Gloves followed a couple miles later. So I guess it really isn’t that cold. My running partner (though it has been almost a years since we have run together) and I were chatting yesterday about an epic 19 degree run we did a couple years ago. Now that was cold! Ok, enough cold talk!

I have been running on my zero-drop shoes again. The hip exercises (an a break from the ZD shoes)I have been doing have been alleviating the pains I had attributed to them. My feet have felt pretty good. I haven’t been averaging super long distances, most have been around 5 miles. My feet have been a little bit sore recently, but I attribute a lot of that to the qigong I have been doing on a regular basis for the last 4 weeks. Several of the exercises have me rising up on my toes and holding there. I definitely feel it in my feet. My hope is that I will be able to toughen them up a bit, I am already noticing a beneficial difference in how my feet feel with the qigong.

My paces have all been hovering around 10 min miles, most of the runs a bit slower than that. But todays was 5 miles at a 9:30 pace. I pushed it a bit today, but I haven’t really been too concerned about going fast. Mostly just want to run and keep my health up and weight down.