Juliana Moves

We are less than one week out from Cabin Fever 5ok, you guys. I am in disbelief. How are we halfway through February?! How am I going to run through snow and mud and slush?! It should be… interesting.

Make no mistake, I am excited! I love the area of West Virginia that we’ll be journeying to and, if conditions improve AT ALL this week, I am looking forward to seeing how it goes. I feel like my overall running volume is less than it was at this point last year, but my fitness feels good. I think cross-training has really benefitted my overall cardio capacity and I seem to be recovering from my lifts pretty well.

This weekend was a solid week of back to back long(ish) runs, so I thought it’d be fun to do a debrief. Here we gooooo.

Friday – 6 miles EZ

This run was unexpectedly glorious. I wore shorts and a long sleeve and felt a tad too cold at first. Fortunately, the sun was out and there was no breeze, so I ended up feeling amazing. I took it super easy and listened to this playlist I found on Pinterest. Beautiful!

When Patrick got home later in the day, I surprised him with a trip to DQ for Blizzards. My honest take? Not as good as I remembered. And almost $17 for two tiny Blizzards and a regular fry! What!

Saturday – 18 miles

This day had a high in the mid 50s so naturally we decided to procrastinate our runs until the warmest part of the day. My soul needed it! We slept in and I make a shaken iced espresso to celebrate the warmer weather. Naively, we thought the blip of warmth would be enough to melt the trails at Rock Creek Park and headed there in the afternoon for the run.

I knew this was likely going to be a bust, so I opted to wear my most comfortable trail shoes – should I need to take it to the roads. And to the roads I went! I tried to shuffle through maybe 2 miles of trail and it was a slick, slushy mess. I couldn’t get solid footing anywhere and even walking (very slowly) uphill felt treacherous and annoying. Once I made it to the road, I roughly mapped out a new route and just went with it.

It felt nice to go at a ‘run all day’ kind of pace. I’ve also been practicing gut training by eating every 20 minutes instead of every 30. It feels like 20 minutes absolutely flies by, but I have noticed that it’s much easier to eat a little less more often!

Sunday – 10 miles

There was rain in the forecast for today, so I suggested we go to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum after we ran in the morning. Conveniently, yesterday a friend successfully ran on some gravel roads out in that direction, so Patrick brilliantly suggested we combine the two activities!

We got a slightly later start than expected but still managed to mostly outrun the rain. My body was tired and these roads are pretty punchy, so I walked a few hills but all in all felt pretty good. I opted to run in road shoes to give my body the extra cushioning and I’m glad I did.

The gravel roads out west on 66 are nice. It was so quiet and peaceful. It brings you the ease of road running with some of the same joy as trail running! I hadn’t done that in a loooong time.

Afterwards, we spent some time at the museum! It is more planes than space, but that’s okay. We got to see Discovery again! Two space shuttles in one month. Lucky me! Walking back to the car, I realized that our black and white car is like a space shuttle. 😉

We grocery shopped on the way home and now I’m sitting on the bed with the Normatec boots on as I write this. Not a bad Sunday evening!

Tomorrow – 4 miles EZ

I think it’s supposed to rain tomorrow too. I have a new pair of road shoes to try, but they’re white and I don’t want to dirty them up on their maiden voyage! I think I’ll sleep in, have breakfast, and then get my run take care of sooner rather than later.

I hope you’ve had a great weekend!

Love,

JN