TWENTY SEVEN

Weekly mileage since December 2016.

That is the number of miles I ran this week. It was my first week over 20 in five weeks. Now, if I were coaching someone, I would absolutely not tell anyone to go from the high teens to 27 in one week. However, I've been running for over six years so I am pretty sure I can get away with it. Nothing these old legs haven't seen before. I really wanted to start running four days a week and the weather cooperated so getting out there wasn't too hard. I even ran 12 miles on Saturday to get ready for the Corvallis Half Marathon in two weeks. I'll taper next week and then look to get back to sub 2 halves in my long awaited return to that race.

One major thing I wanted to test this week was running on sore legs. I've been avoiding that due to my association of it with my arthritis flaring. However, now that my arthritis is being treated and near remission, I needed to test it out again. When I am marathon training I'll be running on sore legs many times. So last Tuesday I ran with Sunstone on tired legs after 10 and 5 the Saturday and Monday before. I'm happy to report my legs responded like they used to; well, before the arthritis that is. After a mile or two they warmed up and the run felt pretty great. It was even a killer hill route. The next day they even felt pretty good; mostly I could just feel soreness going up stairs.

My next test was playing soccer the day after my 12 mile run on Saturday. Soccer has long been a nemesis for my knees. I haven't been able to play it appropriately since before the arthritis crept in years ago. Even when my knees were feeling okay, when I went to play soccer, I was reminded that they weren't normal. Even when I could run just fine, soccer was a whole different level. Well, I'm VERY happy to report that soccer felt normal. I could kick the shit out of the ball with ZERO complaints. It felt good to go out there and seemingly have no restrictions... another step forward!

Anyways, between this and the weather finally starting to turn (as long as I don't look at the current 10 day) I'm feeling pretty positive. I ran the most miles in a week since my arthritis flared up, played soccer without issue, ran the Shamrock way faster than I thought I could... everything is going pretty well! A far cry from hobbled and broken Thomas in late 2016. Hopefully I can continue feeling better and strong the year progresses and I eventually start training for the marathon.