Oh yeah...My Blog!

Like a polar bear, I have an inactive period each year where, no matter what I do, my body just doesn't respond well to activity. Yes, this is my hibernation. Now, that's not to say that I'm being completely inactive. I've been able to keep my mileage in the 30-50 mile range for the past couple of weeks and I usually try to dial it down to around a 6 minute pace a few times each week as well, just to remind myself how far I've fallen. But I also feel like this is what I need to do, both physically and mentally to be able to step into the new year with a recharged body and more importantly, a recharged mind.

Just for kicks I did a turkey trot on Thanksgiving morning, and boy did it hurt. Thanksgiving was exactly two weeks after Ryan was born, so I was going into the race with a total of 10 miles run in the previous two weeks. Yes, I was rusty. I went out hard and quickly realized that the body wasn't liking any of this. I pushed as hard as I could and wound up coming in a hair under 17 minutes for the race, in 4th place. While I would normally be a little dissapointed in such a showing, I must say, under the circumstances, I was pretty happy. It was just in the summer of 2005 when I would have killed to break 17 minutes for a 5K. Now here I am, just about 16 months from there, and I am able to do it after a prolonged layoff. Progress was made this year.

With that realization, things have slowly started to come around the last few weeks. I've run when I felt like it, and haven't run when I didn't feel like it. Come January 1st, I will get into a more structured program, but for now, I'm just going to enjoy the freedom.

Ryan is doing great and while I wish he was a little quieter at night, I really can't complain. Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes. I probably won't be updating this thing too much more until the start of 2007, but who knows. Maybe I'll be inspired at some point. If not, I'll definitely be back in 2007 and will try and get back to daily updates. Thanks to everyone for reading this year. You've all provided me with a great source of motivation and kept me going in what was a tough year on a personal level.