Friday, December 21, 2007

Trail Plans

We are heading north for Christmas to spend time with family and celebrate the birth of Jesus. Along with this vacation I will have a lot of time to run and hike. There are a large number of trails close to the places we will be staying, including the Laurel Highlands Trail (home of the Laurel Highlands Ultra) and the Massanutten Mountain Trail (home of the Massanutten Mountain 100). The weather is looking ok, it is going to be cold and wet with a little snow, but not enough to hinder running. I should be a great time.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Recovery

This weekend I ran with the group RunByFaith. RunByFaith is a Christian running group where I live in Virginia Beach Virginia. Dana Johnston founded the group as a ministry to reach out to runners in the community. I have run with this group on a number of Saturdays and will continue to do so. We ran at First Landing State Park. This park consists of some mostly flat and smooth trails through the woods. It is a wonderful place to run or walk and we encountered many other groups of runners. It was a nice change of pace compared to the lack of runners in my neighborhood.

I am now taking 3 to 7 days off to let my ailing left hamstring heal some before the Christmas break. On this break I am planning on running multiple 20+ mile training runs on the trails around where I will be visiting. I am very excited about this opportunity to hit the trail and want to be fresh to make the most of it. My mileage has been bounding off 36 miles per week and I fell I can push it to 40 or 45 once I am able to heal this nagging injury. I first felt it 5 or 6 weeks ago on a 15 mile run. I was limping around the rest of the day after that run, including a 3 mile walk with my family. I appears to be getting slowly better but I want to allow it a few extra days off to heal. I need to start lifting my legs and need a healthy hamstring to do so effectively.