A little victory

I made it up the hill again!

Ran 1.41  – Pace 9’03” – I felt good.  My legs felt good.  My breathing was pretty good.  My head was good.  I was rarely even thinking about the run and i did not obsessively look at the watch thingy to see how i was doing.  I found a good pace and tried to stick with it and thought about other stuff.  I was feeling it when i got to the top of the hill and i did walk for the next .2 or so, then ran .2, then walked it in.  It is reasonably level from the top of this hill back to my house.  I think that a few more times reaching the top of the hill at a good pace and i should be strong enough to still run the remaining .6.  It will take as long as it takes, but it was nice to make some progress.

40 of the new crunches/10 of the bicycle twisty crunches (i was better at these today, but it is still an odd motion)/25 leg lifts/ 10 push-ups.

Yesterday i did a good stretch routine around noon, and an even more in-depth stretch session before bed.  Using the information from many sources and then the videos on Runner’s World has really helped.  The dynamic stretches are great as well as the IT Band stretches (thanks Abby).  I am beginning to see flexibility progress after just about 3 weeks of doing this regularly.  I have had the most and the quickest progress from the dynamic stretches.  I am doing 5 leg related dynamic stretches.  3 of them were difficult for me to even do and maintain my balance when i started them a week or two ago.  Now I am raising my knees up to smack my chest.  Doing the hacky-sack stretch i am kicking my hand almost nipple high.  And the swinging leg thingy i can do well with my right leg and better than before with my left (there is no falling or danger of falling anymore).   I did not do my traditional floor exercises yesterday, but in addition to two stretching sessions, i practiced golf for about 3 hours.  I will get more into the golf stories a little later.  I am keeping a bit of an offline golf journal for now because i am not done writing the intro to golf that i want to throw on the site for those who may be interested to read, but don’t know anything about golf.  That is coming along and i hope to have that done, some golf stories posted, and incorporate regular golf entries by the end of November.

I am not just a crazy person or a slacker with my 3 hours of golf, i took my dad. It was good for him to be out there again.  He helped me with a few things on the driving range, and then we both had short chip and putt practice and then 2 – 18 hole rounds of chip and putt competition.  Not only was it fun and informative for us both, as well as great practice, it is another layer of motivation for my dad to keep at the recovery process and to follow the schedule.  He doesn’t have trouble doing that, but i don’t think you can have too much incentive to help you do the right thing.