Ramp Up to Big Sur- Week 24

   The last 2 Saturdays my legs have gone into my workouts screaming at me! Last Saturday I rode my bike and my legs were burning through the whole process. I had made a conscious decision to change my training run into a bike ride to give my legs, knees and hip flexor's a bit of a break. While spinning away I seriously questioned my thought process as I felt that running would have hurt way less than how I was feeling on that bike. Regardless of how I was feeling the pain was put to the back burner and the mileage was completed. Fast forward to this Saturday- again conscious decision to miss a training run and instead take on the entertainment of being able to hit a Kickboxing  class! Yet again another brilliant idea! Jumping squats, jumping lunges, walking lunges not only in forward motion but throw a few backwards ones in there. I believe there was more torture that was thrown at us but the brain shut down at some point and just did vs. think!!! I do recall during one of the jogging sections actually hitting my legs with my fists to try and relieve the tightness! Needless to say both Saturday nights I questioned how the morning run was going to go..... 


 Believe it or not in both cases my runs went awesome! The first couple K's my body was trying to find its stride and loosen up. Today I heard the time on the completion of my first km and was pleasantly surprised. I had no idea that I was actually running anywhere near that pace- woo!hoo! Then came the prompt for time and pace at the 4K and woo!hoo! yet again ahead of my usual pace! Speaking of the 4K mark someone must have sent Mother Nature a text that I was having a rocking good run! So "BAM" she showed up in the mode of a horrific wind! She slammed me around for a good half  K then felt guilty for it and gave me a friendly forward shove along the path for a good 0.25K! Very kind of her I thought?! Then randomly as my pace felt great I would get smacked again..... funny this time it was never followed up with a gentle shove in the forward direction. Just repeatedly against me or directly to the side! There is something about running in the wind that brings out the Inner Warrior in me and I go faster! That feeling of someone saying "Oh I am sorry. Is this wind getting in the way of your run?!" just gets my gggrrrrr! Now creme de la creme I hit my 9K mark with 1K left to go and again I get my update. Hell yeah! I am on course for a PB for the 10K!!! My mistake this time I clearly thought this way too loudly and Mother Nature reared her ugly wind storm again! This time I was actually hit so hard that I took two paces backwards! "Hell no I have 1K to go and you are not stealing my PB" so on I pushed while she pushed me back and I am very proud to say "I WON"! New PB created today! This is not my overall PB ever but it is my new PB since getting back into running and I am one happy runner!