I do not have too many exciting things to say about this past week of training. Mostly I’m just proud that I got all my scheduled runs in. I’ve been working like a mad woman trying to get my dissertation written so the fact that I was able to drag myself out of bed and out on a run was a victory in itself. Of course, I know that running is the best thing I can do for myself in these stressful times but that’s hard to remember when the alarm goes off at 6am!

My legs felt really good last week and I credit it to the (almost) nightly yoga sessions I’ve been doing. I recently came across a yoga video podcast that I really works for me. It’s called YOGAmazing and is available for download on iTunes. The instructor is great and the workouts are each about 25 minutes long which seems to be about my yoga attention span. So far my favourites are “Yoga for Runners” and “Yoga for Sciatica.”

It’s been nearly a month since I ran the Mercer Island Half Marathon. I took five days off after the race and then tried to ease back into running. Things were going pretty well until two weeks ago when I sprained my ankle on an easy training run. I have really loose ankles so I roll them quite frequently but this was more serious than usual. All I did was land on a pine cone but that was enough to sideline me from running for a full week. I was still able to downhill and cross country ski on the ankle but it remained swollen and bruised for quite a while.

I’ve been back running for a week and I feel that my ankle is sufficiently healed that I can now commit to a training program. My next major race will be the Rock n Roll Seattle Half Marathon in late June. I had considered trying to run the full marathon but I have a lot of work to do over the next two months (i.e. finish writing and then defend my PhD dissertation) so I’m just doing to half. I’ve picked a pretty easy training program so this probably won’t be a PB effort. I’d like to break 1:55 but this race is really just part of what I’m calling my Seattle Victory Lap. I’m trying to do as many special Seattle things as I can do in my last few months here. Revisiting Discovery Park a few weeks ago is an example. So was the long run I did last Saturday.

Up until now my visits to West Seattle had been limited to a couple of ultimate frisbee games a few years ago. Since the King County Water Taxi started running for the season a few weeks ago I decided it was time to get myself over there again. I’d never been to Alki beach and that had to be corrected. I took the bus downtown and then transferred took the 9:30 am ferry departure. The trip across Elliott Bay takes only 12-15 minutes and then voila you’re in West Seattle! I had a nine mile run on the schedule which I figured would take me about 1:40 to complete. Add a bit of photography time into that and it was the perfect distance to run and make it back in time for the noon ferry. The ferry only runs once an hour so timing was key. It was a beautiful day for a run and there were lots of people out and about on the path along Alki Beach. It was a nice change of pace from my usual laps of Green Lake. After the run I took the water taxi/bus back to my apartment. It was a lot of travel time for a nine mile run but I’d consider doing it again. Check out the view!

The rest of the week’s training was pretty standard. My heart rate has been really high lately but I hope that’s just due to a decline in fitness coming off a break and/or needing to acclimatize to running in slightly warmer conditions.