Last Week in Running – December 2, 2018: Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, changes edition.

For the first time in a very long time, I don’t have a race on the calendar in ink. I do have a few in pencil, though.

This week began with some back pain. It’s mild, but irritating enough. Also, I’m past the two half marathons, so I took it easy.

Monday: Ran 3.28 miles in the cold. It was supposed to be rainy, but fortunately not. I did cut back some of my Monday and Wednesday pre-run form drills and post-run squats due to the back pain. Stayed in Friendship Park for this one. Time of 29:16, pace 8:55 min/mile.

Tuesday: Ran 3.2 miles in the very cold. Back felt better. Because of the cold and some precipitation Monday evening, I stayed on the Cincinnati side and ran down to Paul Brown Stadium and back. Time of 27:43, pace 8:40 min/mile.

Wednesday: Ran 4 miles in the very cold, across the Purple People Bridge and back across the semi-icy Suspension Bridge. Time of 35:25, pace 8:49 min/mile (mostly caused by a slow mile around and across that semi-icy bridge).

Thursday: Ran 6 miles in the very cold, including the last 1/4 mile in ice rain. Kept it in the park – Friendship and through Sawyer Point, Yeatman’s Cove, and Smale Park and around the Bengal’s Practice Field and then up the Purple People Bridge because I wanted to try my new phone at night (but it wasn’t dark enough).

Friday: ran 8-ish miles across all four Ohio River bridges – the Clay Wade Bailey, Suspension, Taylor Southgate, and Purple People Bridge all in that order. I did miss the Veteran’s Bridge (between Newport and Covington), but that bridge is meh anyway. Ran it faster than I intended, probably because the weather broke and it was in the mid-40s in the morning. 8.26 miles in 1:10:38 for an 8:33 min/mile pace.

Last pic from Downtown Cincinnati for a while. That’s the Purple People Bridge in the background.

Overall, that’s 136 miles for the month. Not as much as October, but with two taper weeks, it felt good… and two PRs – 1:42:33 in the Honor Run Half and then turning around 13 days later and laying down a 1:39:35 in the Hungry Turkey Half was NICE!

Ch, ch, ch, changes…

Downtown Cincy is a great spot for running. The parks are 2.5 miles long, so it’s easy to fit 5 miles of running in the park. If you want to add to it, the bridges are all about a quarter of a mile long and can easily open up 7-8 mile routes (and they’re scenic, too!). And they become the foundation for some longer runs, like out Eastern Avenue (part of the Flying Pig Marathon course), Eden Park (part of the Flying Pig Half and Full Marathon course), 8th Street Viaduct, KY-8 towards Ludlow, KY-1120 towards Highland Heights (if you’re into pain, it’s all hill but it has a great view of the east side of the Ohio River Valley if you make it to the freakily-high overpass over I-275).

From here through the foreseeable future, I’ll be working from my home in Batavia, Ohio. My running opportunities have some limits as well as some opportunities.

Limits

It’s going to be more difficult to figure out my near-exact 24 foot spacing for the form and mobility drills I do on Monday and Wednesday pre-runs. I’ll have to convert these to parking spots or something.

The trees are evenly spaced by 24 feet
I are an engineer – yes, I measured it with a wheel

Another limit is that the closest two places to run are my neighborhood and Batavia Township Park. If you’ve followed me on Strava (you likely don’t, but feel free to) and you see a run with just a distance, it was probably in my neighborhood (I don’t willingly show where I live to random strangers on the Internet). There’s a little topography to it, although Garmin claims only 12 feet over 3 miles… there’s a little bit more, but not much more.

Opportunities

So the big opportunity is above. I’ve done some of my running at East Fork Lake, including some of my hill repeats in the last half marathon training cycle and my 18 mile training run for my first marathon was run here. There’s also trails that I haven’t explored.

18 miles. No loop was run twice! It was difficult to run past Old Firehouse Brewery and not stop for some hydration, though, especially since this was in the afternoon.

Another opportunity is that my new job will require more travel. So I’m going to be adding to the number of states I’ve run in. Currently, I think I’m up to 9: Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia, Maryland (both Baltimore and DC), Vermont, New Hampshire, Oregon, Colorado, and Florida. Only 41 left to go!

On to next week!