Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Spring Break

As the subject suggests, it is spring break at CU. It's much needed, on my end. Between some family issues, overall stress from work, and the acute stress from the frustration with my department, which I won't go into here, I need the break.

And so far it's been reasonably productive. I've managed to spend most of the time with friends thus far, and yet be productive at the same time. My apartment is looking (and feeling and smelling) fresher and cleaner than it has all winter. Part of that is due to the 60 degree weather and consequent opening of the windows, but much of it is due to two solid days of spring cleaning on the part of yours truly.

As far as running goes, as this is a running blog, it's been up and down. I was a little burnt out a couple weeks ago. I had been running between 42 and 50 miles a week for about 4 or 5 weeks (5, actually) and took one week at 25 miles, and then a week almost entirely off. The 25 mile week I also added a game of Ultimate Frisbee with some friends from the EE department, which reminded me that, with all the running I've been doing, I've neglected some other leg, not to mention upper body, muscles. I don't know that my legs have every been that sore.

It reminded me that, as much as I love running, I really love so many other sports that it's a shame for me to neglect them as much as I have. And I let myself get burnt out running, which is a danger we all face.

In any case, it caused me to rethink a few plans. I still plan to run the Gary Bjorklund half marathon in June (back to the hometown!), but after that, I plan to start mixing things up a little bit. I still plan to run fairly heavily, moving more to trail running in anticipating the Golden Leaf this year, but I want to branch out and do some other activities as well: climbing, frisbee, etcetera . . .

This is, of course, all dependent on what I find to do this summer. Hopefully that'll be a job at NREL, but we'll have to see about that.