I thought at first that shorter, faster stuff would be harder with the cast, but really it's progression runs that are the worst. Today I had to call my progression because my right shoulder was compensating so much for the broken arm that it began to hurt with every arm swing. Couldn't get to that comfortable, full of run feeling and just called it about a mile before I wanted to. Never got to pick the pace up either. It's funny -- I've been trying to train myself for so long to not sweat this kind of thing and just move on that I wonder if I've maybe gone too far. I hardly had any second thoughts about it. Did a slow jog, grabbed my spikes, did a few strides, went to the weight room. I'm a little nervous all of a sudden that I'm just going through the motions with training; I remember when I had just graduated high school I didn't really push my training, and then became frustrated that, after a breakthrough year, all my races began to stagnate. Last year was a huge breakthrough. This year, I was definitely in a good spot indoors; didn't crack 8 minutes but won all my races and was running some solid workouts. Is that good, or should I expect more? Last year, I was incredibly fired up because it was my last chance to do something big at the conference meet in cross, indoors, and outdoors. I don't have anything like that to motivate me right now. Is that a bad thing? It's probably fine. I just have to get out of this cast.

Not back to blogging -- dunno if I'll get back to writing consistently. I was writing mostly out of frustration due to the long comeback from injury and not getting to race for so long. Wanted to remember what it was like. But I am back to training well and racing (reasonably) well; except for a broken arm a few weeks ago, everything's going great. I'm now at that point of the season (maybe it's because the rising temperatures?) when I start to feel almost too good...when injuries no longer feel like they're looming, and I feel like I can keep my foot down and keep training harder and longer. Just gotta avoid getting carried away...

I ran a progression run a couple weeks ago -- nothing new about that -- but I did it on the track, which brought back memories of a million hard tempo runs I ran last March. Coming off of Indoors last year, I was fired up about Heps and NCAAs, and I thought I had been missing something in my training, and that these were the key. John says that they’re certainly good workouts, but should only be done once every ten days or so, instead of up to three times a week as I was doing. By doing them on the track, I also lost sight of the true purpose of these workouts; instead, I was focussing on hitting splits, and if I was slower one week, I would work harder to try to make up for it.

Training is going well, but it’s all dull laps on the golf course during which I try to imagine what it’ll be like to race again. This daydreaming about dropping hot laps on a banked track isn’t really productive -- though it’s fun -- and even though my next race is a few months away, I thought it would be good to think about how it’ll really go.

Been behind on work on the website (and blogging) -- working pretty hard the last few weeks to make some cash to fund this running dream. Still, made a small change to the blog so you can post comments. Scroll down to the bottom of the post (you have to have javascript enabled). Will have a mailing list form up soon so you can get notifications whenever I blog.

Now that I’m back in Ithaca, and done with the couple races that were planned for October, it’s back to base phase until Indoors. The last four weeks of training haven’t been consistent at all; a toe flexor strain and the Japan trip -- and illness -- set me back a decent amount, and I’ve been aching to get on with a solid uninterrupted training block. It feels like getting back to summer base training, which, in the NCAA system, is the only time you can really put down a block of training without worrying about racing getting in the way. I’ve been asking myself, however -- is that really a good thing?