Long, sort of

Today I met up with the Saturday morning run group for an easy 12 miles. I ran up to GAP then we did a loop around the Greenwood Cemetery and finished up the loop of the park before heading home. I barely made it out the door, I woke up to see snow on the ground and told myself I’d just run tomorrow instead. But then I made the mistake of checking the weather forecast for tomorrow only to see it would be much colder and windier than today and decided that I’d better not put it off. Despite my bad attitude, the run went well and I was glad I got out. I was also glad that the group wanted to go relatively short for a Saturday morning as the wind was really picking up and my legs were numb from the cold by the time we finished the cemetery loop.br /br /Yesterday I got in a great 7 miler. I ended up doing an outside loop of the park at a pretty fast pace for an easy day. It felt so good to be running outside after the last week of limited treadmill running.br /br /In addition to this running, I’ve also been thinking a lot about my running last year. Even though I did manage to finish Boston and put in a solid performance at Reach the Beach, I still feel somewhat disappointed with how the year went. Not only did Boston not go as planned, there were many days where I just didn’t feel like running or I slept through a group run or race that I’d planned on doing. I also went through big spans of time where my mileage jumped around a lot with a 15 mile week followed by 40 followed by 25 with no real consistency. I’m trying to figure out how to snap out of this slump and I’m leaning towards taking a whole month after the Manhattan Half where I don’t wear a watch and I focus on just getting out the door 4-5 days a week, without worrying about pace or distance. I feel like I’ve been training for something for so long or at least feeling compelled to get in the “right” number of miles at the “right” pace for even longer and that I just need a break from all that to refresh my running. So for now, that’s the plan after I get this NYC qualifying half time out of the way. Maybe 2010 will be the year that my running gets more inspired, more fun. Lets hope so.