Back Above 35 Miles Per Week

I now have two weeks in a row that I have over 35 miles per week. Haven't done that since the Route 66 marathon due to knee problems. Woohoo!

Thursday tempuratures were in the teens, but I went out twice and ran - about three and a half miles at noon, and then again with the RunnersWorld group in the evening. It wasn't so bad except that my cheeks froze when running against the wind. And my eyeballs froze and went numb :)

Saturday was an enjoyable run. The schedule had us down for ten miles, which we did by running from the store to Turkey Mountain, and one loop of the red trail and back. Patty wouldn't run the nice velvety smooth dirt trails, but instead ran down the west bank paved trail to get in her extra distance. So, Curtis, Kathy, Becky, Janet, and I ran down the paved trail to meet Patty after we had our delightful run on the dirt paths.

Turned out we had eleven miles by the time we got back to the store. Then we added on another four, this time taking Larry and Bill along. Our chosen route for the last four was the neighborhood route that we did last week. The last mile felt a little weird because my shoes were full of sand. Wonder how that happened?

Sunday I went up to Kansas City with my wife, Marilyn. She was going to a birthday party for a college friend, Gracia Burnham (former missionary to Philippines, kidnapped by Abu Sayef and held hostage for nearly a year, husband killed in firefight during rescue attempt - you may have seen it on the news, but it was about 7 years ago), and I went to visit my dad during the party. I was tempted to run a few laps at my old high school track while I was there, but not enough time.

Got up this morning and ran for ninety minutes on Turkey Mountain. I covered most of the yellow and blue trails, all of the red trail (twice), plus I did a whole bunch more. I'm calling it nine miles, but since I don't have a Garmin, there is no telling what the distance really was. It was a beautiful day. Saw Tom Dorothy during my run, but no other runners. A few hikers were out there.

Total for last seven days is a little over 41 miles. It may be harder to get my distance in this week because I've been called up for jury duty and probably won't be running at noon, as I usually do.