Is April Done Yet?

 TL;DR

I give you, my faithful under appreciated reader(s?) a rabbit.
I give you, my faithful
underappreciated reader(s?)
a rabbit.  Enjoy.
  • Note the publish date, better late than never?
  • What training log?
  • Got shot (twice)
  • Registered for Boston Marathon 2020 fall edition
  • Still a cranky ass, um I mean glute
  • Be humble, stay healthy continues

What Happened?

April vs March

  • Amount of time training is down 7.5% (12:17 to 11:22 per week)
    • Includes run, bike, weights and yoga
  • Average weekly run mileage has regressed from 29 to 28 miles
    • I'm still struggling to get my longer runs up, but did make it to 10 miles twice
  • Body Weight is down from 230 pounds to 225 pounds

What month is it?

This month feels like it had 91 days, and it kinda did.  After the change last month where I took on more responsibility at work, I feel like I've been doing sprints every day while sitting at my desk.  Despite the extra effort, I managed to hold my own and got a lower but similar training volume in during April than I did in March.  However, in the process anything in my life that could be considered a little bit optional fell by the wayside for a while and that includes this blog.  I've spent plenty of time writing in my head, but there just wasn't any capacity left to sit at my desk if I wasn't doing my day job.

As a matter of fact, even my training log suffered.  I've got an old school Excel spreadsheet where I like to log my activities.  I need to manually input the data.  For a software guy, the idea that I'm hand inputting this data that is already automatically logged elsewhere is almost shameful for the minutes of my life it "wastes" every day.  However, since the early days when I first started adding to this document in 2012 it has always brought me satisfaction to manually transfer the data.  It was always a near daily affirmation of how I've changed my life for the better and kept the habit going.  I don't think I've ever gone more than a week without getting it caught up.  This time?  This time it became optional and started collecting dust stuck in time on April 11th.  It finally got the love it deserves on July 1st while I was on a vacation from work.

A couple of pricks

My wife is an essential worker and was able to get vaccinated early in the process.  As the vaccine supply started to catch up to demand and the criteria for participation included more and more people, I kept missing the cut by "this much".  It seemed like every time they redrew the line for vaccine access somewhere, someplace there was someone who'd look at some attribute of mine and declare the new criteria should keep me waiting, but just barely.  Frankly, this didn't bother me at all and I actually found it kinda funny.  I'm a pretty healthy guy from all of this running and biking and stuff who happens to work from home and can pretty easily stay contained within a bubble.  However, my family still worried about me (aww, thanks!) so there was building pressure at home for me to get vaccinated as soon as I could.  For me, that meant that I got shot twice in April.  The first poke was given to me by a nurse that saw I was wearing a marathon t-shirt.  She was an accomplished high school cross country runner back in the day, so we hit it off right away.  She was definitely faster in high school than I was, but then again, I didn't set my 5k PR until I was 42 years old.

I had no issues after the shot until 4 days later.  Overnight, I went from normal to barely able to stay awake at 10am in the morning on a Sunday.  By Monday, my energy level was normal.  However, for about a week afterwards I kept getting a lot of muscle cramps.  It is pretty normal for me to cramp up on occasion, it comes with the territory, but this week was bizarre.  For example, there was a yoga session where I must have had 20 different random muscles cramp up during the 30-minute video.  The same thing happened after the second shot on almost the exact same timeframe.  Naturally, this impacted my training but I'm pretty happy with the fact that for the most part I managed it well and was able to get close to my March numbers overall.

They still like me!  Yay!

The unrestrained optimism from the prior month that had me throwing my credit card around in preparation for a Chicago2Boston attempt looks like it will work out as long as I stay healthy enough.  In April, the fine folks at the Boston Athletic Association granted me the opportunity to register for the 125th Boston Marathon and then later blessed me with acceptance into the race.  This will be my 8th Boston Marathon in a row.  I hope I never wake up from this particular dream that is still coming true.

Gluteus pain not so Maximus

There has been improvement, but it is just slow going.  The two 10 mile runs I got in this month were a relief, but for both it was clear by around mile 8 that I am still in the penalty box.  So for now, the patience continues and I've just been taking what my body will give me while continuing to focus on yoga.  The focused training isn't scheduled to start until mid-May in preparation for a fast marathon attempt in September to guarantee entry into the 2022 Boston Marathon in April of next year.

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