Yup, it’s been a while since I last posted. I can’t even begin to try and explain what has been going on so let’s just say that I started on a nice upswing in mid-February and have been on a nice forward path since. I promise I will fill you all in on what has been going on in the near future. In short, I was officially cleared to resume all running related activities in mid-February and have been on a bit of a tear since.

This has meant that I went on a bit of a race registration blitz. One of those registrations included entering the lottery for the Philadelphia Broad Street Run 10 mile race in May. I’ve done this one a couple of times before but always enjoy this one and a quick trip to Philly makes this easy to get to. Plus Philly Cheesesteaks from Geno’s! My training officially started at the time I was cleared to run so the timing couldn’t have been better.

In March I completed the NYC St. Paddy’s Day 5k on Roosevelt Island. This was the first race since my training began and a good test to see how well my training was going. Winter has been long and drawn out this year in New York and due to everything I have been going through I am not conditioned to do too much outdoor running in these cold temps which left me with a lot of treadmill training.

I was feeling pretty good the week leading up to the race and certainly noticed that my conditioning and overall fitness levels were improving. But I just wasn’t sure about how this was going to translate out on the road so this race was going to be good measure on where I was with my training. Because I suck at writing race reports I’ll just say that race went well and was my 5k time in a few years. So yay to training and good iron levels!

This weekend I’ve got the Damon Runyon 5k at Yankee Stadium. It’s also been a couple of years since I have done this one as well. It also figures that we’ll have temps in the 70s on Friday and Saturday but will dip back into the 50s on race day. This is my life.

In a couple of weeks I’ve got back to back races on a Saturday and Sunday. The first will be the WCS Run for the Wild 5k at the Bronx Zoo and the next day the Rye Derby 5 mile race benefiting the Rye YMCA. I’ll be adding two miles onto the five mile race for my final long run before Broad Street.

You can tell that I’m obviously feeling good about my running again.

One of the the things that has helped has been a new training plan for Broad Street. The race organizers teamed up with the runcoach app and provided all participants access to free training plans through the app. You enter into a recent race time and your goal race and it prepares a training plan for you based on this and some other data. One of the cool things is that the training plan will adjust based on your training. Feel its too easy or that you missed some training runs? Simply have the plan adjust itself to match. It syncs with a lot of other apps on your phone and works pretty well with my Apple watch. The app also provides instructional videos and cross training workouts.

My one problem that I have is that it never accepts my times for my speed work day. I’ll follow the plan  and yet the app always treats my speed word as an easy run. You can edit the logged info, which I do, to specifically state that it was a speed workout and it will save it, mark it as completed but the next time you go into the app it has changed back to an easy run. One, I guess my speed workouts aren’t fast enough for their liking and two, they don’t like their interpretations of your workout to be edited. I’ve contacted them to look into this and will keep you posted.

That aside, the training plan has been great and I really like it. I feel that I have made steady improvements to my time and feel really ready for this race. I would recommend it even with the logging of my speed workouts issue. If I can still use it for free for other distances I would seriously consider using this for future races.

I hope all of you are having the most perfect weather for your running and I can’t wait to experience our warmer temps here in New York!