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Welcome to the April 2024 Ultimate Coffee Date! Can you believe 1/4 of 2024 is done and dusted?! Pour yourself a cup, pull up a chair, and tell join the linkup Deborah and I host the first Friday of every … Continue reading
Can you ever get enough of the cherry blossoms? If so, I haven’t gotten to that point—I hope you haven’t either.
A rare peaceful moment at the Tidal Basin
The weather forecast for the week called for rain Tuesday and Wednesday, so I figured Monday might be my last chance to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. My hamstring isn’t ready for my usual 5 mile Tidal Basin loop, so I plotted a shorter route from my office and stayed on the “far” side from the Jefferson Memorial.
There are no blossoms at the Reflecting Pool, but the Washington Monument at sunrise is always worth a photo stop.
There were a few people at the Tidal Basin for the sunrise, but surprisingly few for how gorgeous it was. It was fun to see couples and families meeting up with professional photographers for photo shoots.
The trees along this wall of the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial were stunning.
I walked around to see them from the other side before heading back to my office.
Monday’s run was hard to beat, but I got in two other runs with Scooby, two Peloton rides, and even (finally!) made it to yoga. I kept up with the last week of the Breakthrough Crew Shamrock Shuffle challenge—except that meditation class.
Monday: 4.2 mile Cherry Blossom run
Tuesday: Upper body strength at home + Peloton rides at my office gym.
Wednesday: 3.7 Scooby Miles
Thursday: Upper body strength + Peloton rides before work and yoga at the Corepower Yoga studio near my office after work. As I shared in my runfessions, I didn’t like the instructor’s style, so that particular class won’t be a regular thing
Friday: Upper body strength + 3. 2 tread miles
My hamstring has done OK with my steady-state outdoor runs, but I’m still doing run/walk intervals on the tread.
Saturday: 4.9 Scooby miles
I did not intend to run this far—I was aiming for 4-ish miles—so I did not round up to 5.0 miles. 😉 It was a great run in the moment—the weather was amazing and my hamstring was okay. Fingers crossed it stays that way.
A huge thank you to Deborah and Kim for hosting the Weekly Run Down link up. And thanks to all of you for putting up with my hamstring saga!
Happy Easter!
Here we are at the end of the first quarter of 2024–can you believe it?! Since it’s the last Friday of the month, it’s time to go marching to the runfessional hosted at Marcia’s Healthy Slice so we can cleanse our souls soles before we head into April.
You also may be joining the Fit Five Friday Link-Up with Darlene, Michelle, Renée, Jenn, and Zenaida.
This week I got to enjoy two classic pink and green signs of spring—the D.C. cherry blossom trees in peak bloom and the Chicago river dyed for St. Patrick’s Day.
Paddle boats at the Tidal Basin
Pink And Green Signs Of Spring
On Saturday, the cherry blossoms weren’t quite at peak bloom, but I knew it would be my best chance of seeing them this year. The weather was amazing for my first bike ride of the year, and because the trees weren’t fully out, the crowds weren’t insane.
I never take as many pictures on a bike ride as I do on a run, but we did stop at the Jefferson Memorial to enjoy the view across the Tidal Basin.
We ended up riding two laps around Hains Point because the trees were so pretty and traffic was light.
The bike lanes are new since last year
when I had to run on the grass to avoid traffic.
Sunday I left the spring weather behind and headed to Chicago where the weather said winter, but at least the Chicago River knew it was St. Patrick’s Day. I braved the cold wind to venture out along the Chicgo River Walk and take it in.
A picture is worth a thousand wind advisories on the weather app!
Monday was my only morning in Chicago with time for a run. I had packed winter running gear for temperatures in the upper 20s, but the Weather Channel app didn’t warn me about the “feels like” of 16F!
I figured out a wardrobe change I’ll share at the runfessional, and headed out.
My first view of the river was so pretty in the glow of daybreak!
The sky over Lake Michigan was overcast so I didn’t get any sunrise photos, but I ran out on a pier to capture the skyline behind me.
Tuesday I got up at 4:00 am to use the Peloton bike in the hotel gym before heading to O’Hare for my 8 am flight home. I was surprised the trainer was in the gym when I got there—I guess he was tidying up after the evening users before the morning folks got there.
Yep, I started that class at 4:16 am!
I’m probably going to have a similar itinerary for my April trip to Chicago, but I’m not sure I’ll hit the gym at 4 am again. It was stressful with no time to spare before the Uber I’d ordered for 5:45.
The rest of my week I was back to my normal routine at home. I took all the classes for my Breakthrough Crew Shamrock Shuffle challenge—I can’t believe there’s only one more week to go.
I gave my hamstring two days off after Monday’s 4 mile run and it actually seemed to feel better after Thursday’s tread run than it did before. 🤷♀️ I had my last shockwave treatment on Friday, so fingers crossed my recovery continues. If not, the next option probably is PRP injections but I’m really hoping that’s not necessary!
A huge thank you to Deborah and Kim for hosting the Weekly Run Down link up. And thanks to all of you for putting up with my hamstring saga!
Did you wear green on St. Patrick’s Day?
Ya’ll, I’m so excited my hamstring is finally really recovering. You’ve put up with months of mopey posts—now I may bore you with posts about how happy I am to be really running again—albeit cautiously.
Saturday morning smiles!
Really Running Again
At my second appointment of my second round of shockwave treatments, my orthopedist encouraged me to keep nudging up the load on my hamstring. I did that in two ways—nudging up the distance of my runs with Scooby and nudging up my treadmill intervals from 2 min/1 min run/walk intervals to 3 min/1 min intervals. The truth is, I feel my hamstring a bit at the end of these nudged-up runs, but the fantastic news is that it quiets down on its own by the time I’ve moved on to the rest of my day! I have been icing it post run (by sitting on an ice pack), but even the need to do that is diminishing.
The trick now is to keep making myself do my PT exercises and hold myself back from doing too much too soon.
What’s not really running this week is my Garmin. After three years of nearly constant wear my Garmin Venu Sq won’t hold a charge anymore. I contacted customer support and tried all the tricks, but it won’t last more than 8 hours. Garmin offered to send me a refurbished watch for $99, but I might just buy a new one for $199–or wait for a Mother’s Day sale?
I’m so happy to be really running again, I focused on running and did minimal strength workouts this week. I did all the classes in the Breakthrough Crew Shamrock Shuffle challenge, but most were only 10 minutes.
Sunday: Another reason I scaled back on strength this week is that it took days for my arms to recover from the stack of upper body classes I took on Sunday. I thought Jess’s chest + back class would be a good compliment to Andy’s arms + shoulders class, but Andy’s class burned out my triceps that were recruited in all the push-ups Jess had us doing. I followed the programming of Jess’s HIIT run, but didn’t push my pace during the running intervals.
Monday: I dragged myself out of bed with the time change, and was glad to be working at home ahead of my orthopedist appointment. My legs felt good after Sunday’s tread run, so I did another tread run, knowing I would be using the Peloton bike at my office gym on Tuesday.
Tuesday: Still suffering from DOMS, I did a light strength workout at home, and then headed to the office gym to use the Peloton bike.
Wednesday: Marcel Dinkins is back to really running after her own injury and recovery from a torn ACL and surgery. She uses her Walk + Run classes to focus on a specific aspect of running form, and this class we focused on keeping our shoulders back and down.
Thursday: I celebrated Pi day and Kim’s birthday with a 3.14 mile run! Since I was working at home I missed the Pi day celebration at work, but we had “pizza pie” for dinner.
Friday: A rare Friday in the office because I was meeting Carianne after work for her pre-race dinner. Peloton dropped a Joan Jett artist series of classes this week, which I kicked off with CDE’s ride. She used those fast-paced songs to push us through some high cadence pedaling.
Saturday: Now that I’m back to running with Scooby, he has to be patient while I do a warm-up in my basement gym. He’s such a good boy, but starts complaining (whining) after about 15 minutes. 🤭 I played Jess King’s Joan Jett run and it was fantastic. If you need a playlist to pump you up and motivate you to run hard, this is it! I covered 3.3 miles—my longest constant run (not counting Scooby stops) in ages.
The neighbor’s dogs were out in their front yard during our post-run photo session, and barked at us so much they got other neighbors’s dogs who were inside riled up—it was a cacophony of barking, but Scooby wasn’t phased!
A huge thank you to Deborah and Kim for hosting the Weekly Run Down link up. And thanks to all of you for putting up with my hamstring saga!
Would you take Garmin’s offer for a refurbished watch or just buy a new one?
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