I'm not completely lazy...

.....Only mostly.

I know I've been missing. After the back pain I laid off and I kinda got away from the habit of running. The only thing I did was a really great snowboard session with BJV.

Yesterday, however, I had no excuses! The weather was perfect with a spring like temperature of 65 degrees so I went for a run. A long run of 4.5 miles that took 45 minutes. It contained a huge uphill that lasted forever! The run felt great and I only started feeling discomfort with about a half mile left.
(below you will find photo proof of my run and the gigantic hill!)

Today i feel pretty good. Tomorrow I'll run again, not a huge run but something to get my legs moving

- pj

Back to running

So my back feels significantly better today so I went for a run. Did a 30 minute run for a distance of 3 miles. It was a pretty good run with no troubles to report.

I'll see how I feel tomorrow and I may do a 15 minute run on the "off" days now.

-pj

Back pain

No idea what happened today but I was at work, everything was fine and suddenly I had an extreme pain in the center of my back in between my shoulder blades. Lucky for me my very next inspection was for a doctor that noticed I was in discomfort and advised me to take some Motrin and how much of it to take.

It feels better for a while until the pills wear off. Anyway today I will skip my run cause I'm hurt. We will see how tomorrow goes

-pj

Weekends

They have to be the hardest thing to get thru for me. Partly because it's so much harder to get motivated to run but mostly because it's so hard to get motivated to write on the blog.

My Saturday run was terrible. I went out for barely 15 minutes. It was so cold that my legs never got warmed up and stayed stiff. The cold air was hurting my chest so I felt it best to just call it a run. I, however, made up for it yesterday. Barb and I went to the Natural History museum where we walked and checked out all of the exhibits. Afterward we walked from the museum on 79th street all the way to a restaurant on 13th street. It was a very long cold walk but I was happy that I was moving around rather than just sitting around.

Well I hope those of you that resolved to be fit keep going. It's hard at first but slowly I'm sure you're noticing you're making your belt one notch tighter

-pj

Hill workout

I wanted to do something different other than the regular LSD (long slow distance) run so I did some hill repeats.

I started with a 10 minute warm up to a hill that I thought would be a challenge. Below I attached a picture of it. Honestly it looks worse in person, it's pretty steep but it's not very long. I did 6 sprints up with a jog down.

Next time I do this I will pick a longer hill for sure

-PJ

Tools of the trade

Wondering how I keep track of my runs? Well I use an iPhone app called imapmyrun+. It's a really great running aid that does so many things. Here is a quick list of my favorite features

• gps tracking that plots out where you ran
• integrated music and camera thru te app so you don't have to back our of the app to change a song.
• it connects to all the social apps so friends can see what you're doing
• (this is my favorite) you can set voice prompt parameters that will tell you current time, speed and distance at a specific time or distance. It's really useful when you're trying to keep an even pace

I know there are a bunch of other thing out there but I find this one to be the easiest and straight forward to use.
I attached a few screen shots for your enjoyment

-pj

Weigh in...

Well I literally weighed myself today, and I have to admit I was surprised. Current weight is 191. That's 4 pounds lost in about a week and a half only doing runs, nothing else.

Yesterday I also completed another run. It was a little over 3 miles and everything felt fine..... Kinda. I had a major case of chaffing which sucked in the shower. I know that's not glamorous but it's the reality of running.

Today is a relax day and tomorrow is another run.