Mr. Polehn writes

It’s warming up and the sun has been shining (kind of). You could almost say it was running season.  I have to admit however, at the when it first started warming up this year I was dreading starting to run.  Memories of last year's misery haunted me and I was seriously contemplating giving the whole thing up.  Ultimately I did give running one another shot. So how are things going this year? Pretty darn well actually. Better than ever even! This year I’ve earned PRs for every distance Strava keeps track of, I haven’t suffered any injuries and I’m genuinely enjoying myself. This is much better than last year. Last year I had a short and fairly miserable season, plagued with injuries. Last year I had  a few goals tied up with running . I wanted to run longer and faster than I ever had. I had really detailed goals for each week of the summer, how far I should be running and at what pace. I tried to make sure I never broke the  “10% rule”  adding too m...

Earlier this year I made a few goals for myself.  One was to run .  A lot.  The other was to write , a lot more than I have.  Sorry to say I haven’t kept either of these really well.  Sometimes life get in the way, sometimes things don’t work out the way you hoped, sometimes you set the wrong goals and sometimes you just plain fail.  I’d like to say life got in the way and things just happened, but I have to be honest. Running Major failures in the running department.  As you can see from the graph below, things were going pretty well for a time.  Right on track.  However, around the 30k per week mark I started to have nagging shin splints.  Not so bad that I was ready to give up running (the proper cure for shin splints) but bad enough I knew I should back off.  So I did, only to later end up with shin splints before during and after every running session.  It was finally bad enough for me to realize I needed to lay it off...

Running goals Since setting some running goals  for the year I've increased my weekly distance by about 10 km more or less meeting my target distance for each week.  I've also done better than I expected at improving my pace so far.  I participated in the Cherry Festival 10k run where I had a new personal record time for a 10k (57:46 according to strava ).   However, this last week I've started to feel sluggish and worn out every run.  I've been running three times a week since I started adding distance.  One of those runs for the last several weeks has been a 10k.  Last weeks pace was the first time since I started that I did not make my pace goal  I felt pretty miserable all week.  I think it's time to run four times a week at shorter distances and not have a weekly 10k until it's a necessity to reach 40k per week goal.  I'm only about half way through my goal of building up to that distance per week and I don't want ...

The Dalles Cherry Festival is coming up (Saturday April 22nd this year).  Despite the cheesiness and the crowds, this is actually one of my favorite "local holidays."  The 10k run is one of my new favorite traditions.  The run has been around longer than I have and goes right through where I grew up.  It's about time I started to "enjoy" it. """April 22nd – 3k and 5k are out and back, with a nice uphill at the start. The 10k does a LOOP, with rolling uphill the first half, then enjoy the nice 9+ miles of downhill to the finish.  Paved, scenic, orchard country roads. Awards to the top 3 in each age division, all runs. Great random prize drawings! Proceeds will benefit TDHS Cross Country Teams. Registration forms available at The Dalles Chamber office.""" If you're following along at home and can convert customary to metric in your head a run with 9+ miles of downhill is a comically long 10k.  Despite the obvious typo this is...

  Now that it's possible to step outside without fear of slipping, falling and cracking my head open on some ice it's time to put back on the running shoes and go enjoy the sun (or rain as the case may be) again.   Distance   There was a time last summer when I could run 30k in a week.  It felt great to be able to run 10k every other day without feeling 100% miserable the entire time.  After a break lasting several months I am nowhere near having that kind of a base.  My plan is to start things off with a goal of 15k per week moving up 10% every week until I get to 40k a week.  I can't really see myself being able to run more than that.  A t some point this summer I'll be adding regular biking and swimming into the mix.   I should probably leave time for family, work and sleep somewhere in my schedule... Pace   I'm pretty slow.  I've never really gotten much better.  Even when I was in decent running shape I was h...