Labor Day: back to (running) work!

With the apparently incidental fall in June and the subsequent shoulder fracture and 6-week running break, I have really been... falling behind: a missed opportunity to run Tahoe Rim Trail (no 100-mile this year...), passing on Gary's Tahoe Rim Trail Fastest Known Time attempt mid August, getting behind on my weekly blog post pace, and behind in my running log. Not to mention my first job and two international business trips these past 2 weeks (Mexico City and Hong Kong).

I just posted 2 blogs on these trips, this will make three this weekend with this one! And what a running weekend this has been to celebrate Labor Day! A quiet weekend on the family side, with Gregoire already having a lot of home work just after one week in High School. Beyond some family time, my main goals were first to catch-up on a serious sleep deficit and log quite a few miles on the trails.

It hasn't been easy with the heat and the lack of training and speed, but I managed to run 3 times 30 miles and about 10,000ft cumulative elevation overall. I went twice on the Table Mountain Trail which we'll run next week for Steve Patt's Stevens Creek 50K. That was Saturday and Monday.

On Sunday, I went for what was supposed to be a easier run, on Stevens Creek Trail but toward the Bay, through Shoreline in Mountain View. I managed to go arond the Palo Alto's airport and golf course and come back to Cupertino but I had only taken with me 280 calories which were way insufficient to make up for the 2,900 or so calories I did burn... I didn't have any cash with me so I had to call Agnès for a pick-up, not being able to run the last 2.5 miles of this 32-mile course... How embarrassing... I was starving and gobbled up a Big Mac menu at McDonald's, that helped...

With that, I'm not back to my 100K/62.2-mile weekly average, and have still quite some work to rebuild speed. I can't believe how running has become so much harder in a matter of weeks... The shoulder is ok during the runs now, I'm just thinking about it in the rocky sections, paying attention no to fall, and of course not carrying a water bottle with that arm, but a backpack instead. The pain still comes back every night though as the shoulder stops moving and that wakes me up. Hope my PT is going to do magic tomorrow; 5 more sessions to go on my current referral and I have yet to recover many degrees of range of motion... Although I enjoyed being out there on the trails in such a great weather, I'm looking forward to getting more pleasure in my runs again! In the meantime, now that Labor Day is over, let's keep... working hard! :-)

Have a great week all!

PS: a refreshing halt at the bottom of Table Mountain Trail to cool off in the Stevens Creek