Middle age fitness.

In December, after Alice’s death, I decided to run outside and run long. I just wanted to be in the woods and away from roads – to clear my head, I quiet lots of internal chatter and turn inwards. I joined the MCRRC winter trails program and have run with them for a few weekends. They are a funny group of people who are like – you can totally run 100 miles at a time. But try 50K first. I just wanted to run in the woods and not pay attention to my pace. I have never really run long, long. I ran a half marathon in 2013 and then never again. I’ve really only trained for 5Ks and 10Ks with my weekend long run averaging about 7 miles. I’ve run 7 miles every Sunday for years (I understand that 7 miles is long too, but after you do it for many years, it just becomes regular). But in December and early Jan, I’ve run 12 miles 3 times – very slowly and walking when I wanted to. Two of the three, I ran with the group. I ran one by myself over Christmas break in New Mexico. It does end up a faster run with fewer stops and less navigation on my own when I run with the group, but I have to talk a lot to people which is both nice (the time passes more quickly) and kind of a lot (sometimes it’s like a very long first date). Usually, the MRCCR runs are on Saturday which is fine, but I worked a hospital shift on Friday and I didn’t want to get up early on Sat, so I ran the published route by myself on Sunday and I finished the 16 mile (!) run on my own. I can’t believe it. It took me about 4 hours – I did stop a lot, but I felt good the entire time. I do like running by myself, I guess even for long periods of time. After the Cherry Blossom, I paused getting weekly workouts from Paul, but now with the new year, we restarted again – hopefully culminating in a marathon to celebrate my 50th birthday later in the year.

I feel like you can see the little red spot on my nose from the n95. I switched back to the less comfortable 3M n95 mask work. Somehow if it is less comfortable, I feel like it must be working better. lol. The hospital is as full as it’s ever been with covid patients – as of last week it was back to May 2020 numbers. Though I did not have to take care of any of them.

Jeremy has a simple outpatient hernia surgery scheduled on Wed. They wanted a covid test within three days of the surgery. First, the appointments are impossible to get and second, the turn around time has gotten longer. So I booked an appointment for Sunday (yesterday) two weeks ago, but it got snowed out – Jeremy tried to go in the terrible driving weather to make this appointment but when he got there, it was closed for the weather and then he turned around and had a very nerve wracking drive home. Then we tried to search and search for a testing site today – I did find a county run one that had appointments today – but the turn around time is 3-4 days which would place it after the surgery. I do not know how this is suppose to help anyone with testing so hard and turnaround time so long – so we’ll see if the surgery happens. The reason he is getting hernia surgery after more than 4 years of considering it is because he decided to lift heavy things. And therefore, the hernia is going to get fixed and now we have an enormous squat rack in our bedroom.