Ah, Routine and Decompression ... and Selling My Babies

I owe anybody who has been around me for more than 30 seconds over the past three weeks an apology. 

I'm sorry.

There you go.

I've been so amped up, cranked, nervous, tired and excited that I've been unusually emotional.  Too happy, too mad, whatever. 

I feel better now.  I've hatched out my game plan for the next six months and had a typical, comforting and wonderful run this morning.  I got up, worked on the jump rope for a few minutes, did my routine of lunges, squats, pushups and crunches, then hit the road for a 6 1/2 mile run.  My ITB ached a bit here and there, but I found that if I kept the pace between 8 and 9 mm, it was fine. 

There is a stretch on this run that is pretty tough, climbing about 300 feet in just under a mile.  It felt good to work hard on that hill, not having to worry about saving anything for the bike ride later. 

I've got my half marathon on 12/11, and will run it without a time goal what-so-ever.  I realize that I just don't have the running base I need.  So starting this week I'm base building and will do so until mid-April.  I should have a conservative accumulation of 500 miles running by that time, building distance slowly three weeks consecutively, then tapering off for a week.  I'm excited about it. 

During that time I hope to drop my remaining weight and be ready to just chew up some miles running.  Also, in April I'm making a serious attempt at qualifying as a platinum cyclist (which means you get to line up at the front of the line and other cool crap). 

That brings me to this.  I'm going to sell my babies.  I love playing guitar.  I haven't played in MONTHS AND MONTHS.  The past few times I played, it was for perhaps 10 to 20 minutes.  It sucks because I have slowly collected dream equipment.  I'm now ready to sell that equipment to buy a better bike. 

That's a bitter sweet thing really.  On one hand I'm very sad at the prospect of selling my guitar-stuff.  I love that "stuff."  On the other hand, though, I'm at a different stage in my life now.  I don't sit around drinking beer and making loud noise all day anymore.  I don't spend hours and hours trying to master certain phrases, or work on timing or scales and dexterity.  Instead I work on hill climbing, sprints, lactate threshold and so on. 

Enjoy your Thanksgiving!