The Most Awesome Awesomeness

My wonderful wife gave me a Valentine's Day gift. It was an unusual gift. It involved a two night getaway to a cozy cottage on the Wenatchee River, just outside of the quaint Bavarian-styled village of Leavenworth, WA. What's unusual about that? Well...it's a getaway for ME ONLY. It took me a couple of months to cash in on the gift, due to my workload. In fact, that's what the gift was all about – giving me a chance to decompress after 5 months of craziness with my business. At one point, I threw down a stretch of 40 days without a day off. Let me just say that I'm having a blast enjoying the scenery, solitude, and the hot tub on my deck overlooking the Wenatchee River, watching Osprey flying by in search of a juicy fish.

Nice, you say, but what does this have to do with running? Well, today I took advantage of the dirt & cinder trail by the river and got in my longest "run" in my current rehab cycle. It was two miles of a run/walk (1 min. each). It was incredibly satisfying, even aside from my compliant heel. During this run, I had a bit of a revelation. Not incredibly profound, but a moment of clarity about my immediate future as a runner. This ties in with my "Balance" mantra I wrote about at the beginning of this year. Running is still my passion (exercise-wise), and will remain so. But, knowing that I'm typically an "all-or-nothing" type of person, I'll be focusing much more on staying strong overall with a varied approach...and for the first time in awhile, I'm perfectly okay with that. In fact, I plan on building up, gradually, to a point where I test my speed in shorter races, using my approach of no more than three runs per week (along with a long bike ride and a swim, plus two days of weights). I wouldn't use this approach to train for a marathon (or even a half), but I won't be training for those anytime soon. I'm actually excited about this, whereas before I looked at it as a necessary evil in order to not re-injure myself (or not stay injured, as the case may be). I'm not there yet, but by later this year, I hope to start upping the intensity a bit, while moderating the volume and frequency of my runs.

So, unless it's the elation of this head-clearing getaway talking, I'm excited to see what happens!