Running Chick

Remember back about a month ago when I was yapping about my seasonally confused tomato plant?

Well, now look what it's doing now ...



And there's more to come ...



That red one's going in my lunch salad tomorrow. YUM.

After two failed attempts, I finally found the Oskar Cemetery today on my tromp through the woods.  I also explored two new trails.  Much excitement! The snowmobilers have been very busy.  The trail looks like I-75 with all the motorized tracks. And non-motorized. Coyote, I think.  Some of the other tracks I saw that I was able to identify were rabbit, deer, fox, squirrel, mouse/teeny tiny rodent, dogs, dudes, and skier peoples. I finally ended up finding the cemetery. I walked around for a bit and spent about 10 minutes trying to get a decent snap of this guy. On my way back I found a new trail.  It basically looped around and ended up in the back of the folks' house at the 2-mile mark. I wanted to get some more miles in so I used my gps to route me back to the main trail.  After following that for a bit, I came around a corner and found another new trail! This trail led me through an open field.  The wind was really strong and cold, so I didn't stay on it long.  On the way back, I passed through some scrub brush and in all of the brown, these vibrant red berries caught my eye.  I have no idea what type of berries they are, but they sure were striking against the drab, brown of everything else around them. I also thought this group of birch trees looked pretty cool, too. In all, I tromped for a little over 2 hours for 4.10 miles. Fun, fun, fun!

This week was a cut-back week so my long run was only four miles.

I don't know if it was due to the shorter miles or the 1/4 of Power Bar I had before, but I totally killed it.







While it wasn't all that cold outside - around 24 degrees - I ended up running into a steady wind the entire time which chilled me to the core.  I'm still trying to get warm and it's been hours since I ran.  I'm currently eyeing up Josh's bottle of Scotch in the liquor cabinet.  A shot of that would warm me up, although I'd have to hold my nose when I do it.  That stuff is seriously disgusting.  I might have to give my pal Jim Beam a call, instead.

Totals for the week: 11.01 mile @ 10:41 average pace

Next week I make a jump to 17 miles and I'm a little concerned that this is going to be too big of a step.  My weekly miles have been hovering around the 11-13 mile range and jumping to 17 would be a serious violation of the don't-increase-your-weekly-mileage-by-more-than-10% rule.

I don't exactly have the best history of increasing my miles and staying healthy.  In fact, I think my history would indicate that as soon as I crank up the mileage, my body goes on strike.  I would really, really like to make it through this season injury-free, so I'm contemplating dropping my during-the-week miles and keeping my long runs as they are.

I have to admit, I hate coming to this part of my training.  Do I play it safe and risk being undertrained? Or do I push forward and risk injury?

Not know.