Better late than never

10:55 AM - Westboro - 6 miles, 43:00.
Drills and strides in the parking lot afterward.
12:00 PM - BSC - Weights, 30:00.

Had the luxury of a late start at work today so I was able to get in a solid session this morning without rushing around. Of course, I still managed to waste more time than I should have leaving the house and skipped out on the 30-minute spin I was planning on post-run, but I can live with that for now.

I'm trying to make a real effort to keep consistent with doing drills on a regular basis from here on out. I haven't been doing anything too technical or fancy, just three sets of high knee skips, kickouts, backward running, quick feet, butt kicks and side-to-side shuffling, followed up by a few 15-20 second strides. The whole routine takes about 10 minutes and I hope to do it three times per week. That's 30 minutes per week and two hours per month more than I was doing. Heck, that's a whole day's worth of drills over the course of a year. I'm hoping it helps with form, efficiency and all that good stuff.

Weights are another new addition to my weekly routine. I had been hitting them three times a week for the past 8 weeks but now that I'm back to running regularly I'm scaling that back to twice. No, I'm not worried about turning into Mr. Universe, but two sessions a week - Mondays and Thursdays - fit nicely into my schedule. The whole circuit takes 30 minutes, so there goes another two days of my year right there. If it helps keep me injury-free, however, it's well worth the laughable looks I get from the meatheads in weight room when I'm squatting the bar, benching a big 65 pounds or curling a dumbell that pales in comparison to the size of some of these guys' morning turds.

Sorry for that vile visual. Disgustingness aside, I feel good about the direction things are heading. Let's leave it at that.

Lastly, I wanted to plug an outstanding article in the latest issue of Running Times, but it's already after 11 PM and I promised myself I'd get to bed at a decent hour tonight so I'll be brief and boring. Scott Douglas penned a piece on six lessons he's learned in 15 years of close contact with elite runners. He couldn't have hit the nail on the head any more squarely, and that's all you're getting out of me. Now go to your nearest newsstand and spend the $4.99. It's well worth the scratch.