Do or die time.

Combination of not wanting to update, then getting a little busy in my work life means no posts.


Due to my injury, and flexibility in my old "job", i hadn't woken up at 4:30am since last June, and had gone from a 9pm sleep time to 11pm'ish sleep time.  This morning's 4:30am alarm was brutal.  Waking up at that time is for the birds. 
Last Saturday i met a friend for a trail run.  Mer was looking for 7 miles on trails so i signed up for that in a second as it's rare to catch her on an off day.  Within a mile we were running a "crazy" pace i'm not used to at all, and I felt like my IT Band was going to cripple me as I'd give the pain a 7 of 10, but after a creek crossing break, the pain magically subsided and the rest of the run was 100% pain free.  Did this new faster pace help?

I didn't run again until Wednesday as this is my first week in a new job and I've been pretty overwhelmed.  Wednesday had me run alone up at Emma Long park.  It's a motor cross trail system, but no one is there on weekdays.  The trails are great.  Tons of single track dirt which is very hard to come by in limestone country, so it's a treat.  Since Cindy was stuck in traffic and i was on a hard timeline, i grabbed my nano, cranked the tunes and ran at a pretty fast pace again.  last 5 mins i felt a very minor numbness (1 out of 10 on pain scale) so quite promising.

This morning I decided to venture onto roads for the first time in a long time.  I've tried here and there, but within 10 mins i feel a pain and call it a day as flat asphalt has been killing me.
Bruce and i did the 2.2 mile loop with Karma then ran a few more for a total of a little over 5.  He said the pace was about an 8min/mile.  My ITB started to grumble (5/10) with about to miles to go, but overall I'm please with the effort.   5 miles at 8min/mile is a long way from the days of the "I don't get out of bed for less than 10 miles" runs at 7:30 pace, but it's a start.  I was pretty winded when done.

8 weeks till Boston. The goal is to simply cross the finishline in one piece.  That's all i want. 


Speaking of birds, seems like every other intersection in Austin looks like this below.  The city is being overtaken by blackbirds and grackals. They are scavenging and aggressive birds that eliminate indigenous populations.  If it was up to me, I'd kill them all. And that's saying a lot, because I don't kill stuff. 


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