Spring has returned!

Saturday’s near freezing temperature, rain, and snow was replaced with warmth (14C/57F) and sunshine by Sunday afternoon. My wife dozed off on the couch, so I decided to go for any easy run. It was quite windy as I wound my way over the field paths and bike trails surrounding my town. People were out in masses, walking, talking and enjoying the sunshine. I ran for about 54 minutes, covering around 9K/5.6M, an easy run on a beautiful day!

My body has been stiff and kind of achy the last few runs, in particular a lower abdominal pain which I’m a bit concerned about. I beginning to believe that I didn’t allow myself enough recovery time after the last marathon. I have also been slacking off on my cross-training and diet, luckily my weight has remained consistent. In any case I can tell that my fitness level is not what it was a year ago.

I have committed myself to a few shorter races in the near future. The first will be on April 1, an annual 10K race in the neighboring town of Blankenloch. Several of my running club will be participating, so it should be fun. Based on my running for the last week I will probably treat this more as a fun run. I also am signed up for a hilly half-marathon on April 14th, but again this will be just a training run – it follows part of the 80K/50M race route that I will be running in June.

I have been planning on running a training marathon on April 22, but based on my slower recovery from this month’s marathon it may not be such a good idea. At this point I would favor a hilly 50K trail race on May 17th in the Westerwald Forest. I ran this ultra last year and found it to be challenging and just a beautiful place to run.

Lastly, my wife has decided to pursue the technical writing career path, rather then the bookkeeping. Now it is only a question of whether she can still get into the course that begins in April.