Looking up again

Things seem to be back on track again.  It doesn't hurt that the weather here in the bay area has been absolutely beautiful.  I was lucky enough to work from home yesterday and had just a really nice run in the warm sun in the late afternoon.  I know that it will cool off again, but I love that we get these glimmers of spring when it could/should still be cold and rainy.

I've been tracking my LH for the past couple of days and I surged this morning, so it looks like AF will show up in the next couple of weeks.  Yay for progress!

I live near an open space preserve that has lots of great trails.  There's one trail in particular that I love, and have been doing ever since I started running when I was 14.  I usually run to the park from home, but I've also run it when I lived with my parents.  And when I didn't live as close as I do now, I would often drive there and run up the loop and up the switchbacks from the parking lot.  

I don't run this loop as often as I like because I don't always have the time (or fitness) for a hilly 75 minute loop.  I could drive to the park and run it from there (only 45 minutes!), but the parking lots are always full, and I prefer not to take the extra time to or have the extra hassle.  Plus, dogs are not allowed, and unless my husband has already taken him out on a run before me, I usually have a canine partner.  Hmm, I seem to  have a lot of reasons excuses to pick another route.

When I was pregnant last month I kept trying to find a weekend to run this loop before I couldn't.  I've walked it before while pregnant, and while it's beautiful, it's not the same, so I really wanted to figure out a way to make the time.

I finally made it up there this past weekend.  And it was wonderful.  Again, nice weather makes everything better!  On my way in, I decided I wanted to switch things up and run up the hill hard.  Coaches will tell you that the way to improve performance is to continually challenge your body in different ways.  If you constantly do the same workouts week in and week out, your body will become efficient at them, and you will not improve.  I have become stagnant in the past year and a half.  I rarely run hard.  I don't have a goal that I'm working towards.  Running is nice, but it's kind of boring.  It's time for a change.

I decided to make a running goal (that I will keep!) and rather than make my goal be a race on a certain weekend or course, I wanted to focus on this route that I love.  I have always logged how long it takes me to get up the switchbacks.  It's a nice benchmark that gives me an idea of how fast I am running.  So I ran up as hard as I could (my quads were screaming) and compared it to my times over the years.  It's not terrible, but since I don't always go hard up the hill, it's clear that there's room for improvement!  I'm going to focus on trying to better my "go hard" time up the hill over the next several weeks and will do another benchmark run in mid-April.  I like to think I can drop 30-45 seconds and would love to drop more, but we'll see what happens.  I'll need to get in some hill repeats, I can do some tempo runs, etc., but honestly I think it will just be nice to shake things up.  I don't have the ability or flexibility in other areas of my life to do that, and I know that I will benefit from putting this out there for myself.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm happy to be doing those small things that make me happy.