Day: July 19, 2004

183. No motion, either direction. I take that as a positive.

Good week last week. Ran Wednesday by myself, and then Thursday with Christian. Thursday’s run was one of the best I’ve had in a long while – felt really strong, and it was an incredible day. It’d been raining all morning, but when we hit the turn-around point, the sun came out, and it was nice and warm all the way back. Chris is making great progress, and I’m soon going to be the one getting dropped by him. But till then, it’s a perfect application of the small dog theory – he drives me to keep going.

Didn’t do anything this weekend except for move 4 yards of dirt on Saturday. I was going to build on the swingset today, but we drove over to Old Saybrook for some furniture and pizza on Saturday and picked up a screw in one of Missy’s tires. So the boys and I went to get it fixed this afternoon while Missy caught up at work. My back thanked me.

But Saturday was exceptional.

Back to running – today’s tip is one I’m stealing from Galloway’s Book on Running – Christian and I were pounding up the hill on our way back into NUWC, and I noticed he was trying to keep his stride the same length while running uphill. I pointed out that he was having to do a whole lot more work with each step that way, and that it might be easier on him to take shorter steps on the uphills. It feels funny at first, but ti works. Think about it – you wouldn’t ride a bike up a hill without kicking it down into the small chainring and big cog (unless you’re a singlespeed junkie), why keep it in high gear when running uphill? So Chris downshifted, and was still going strong when we hit the top of the hill instead of crashing as soon as we crested.

Good book, Galloway’s.