TGIF! First full week back to work nearly complete, and what a week it’s been. Tomorrow I have my first race of 2015. It’s the Frozen Toe 10K, a trail race that’s the first in the trail series I signed up for this spring. I’m not expecting much from this race, as my running has been very minimal and sporadic since the Marine Corps Marathon. It’s all due to a combination of unfortunate events and then the holidays.

On my first run post-marathon, I rolled my ankle which caused me to miss about a week of running due to pain in my foot (oddly enough, the ankle itself didn’t hurt). My running was on and off after that, as I tried to return to a regular schedule and then would have to take a few days off because the foot felt off still. In early December I made another attempt at returning to running, and ran the Frosty 5K on a rainy, cold day. The next day I came down with a bad sinus infection that lasted nearly 3 weeks, with my worst and longest lasting symptom being chest congestion. So that again limited my running, and most other forms of exercise too.

Then the holidays arrived, and I found myself very busy during the week and out of town every weekend. Could I have carved out some time to run? Yes, probably. But I didn’t and that’s on me. Finally, at the end of December began the epic tooth adventure. I was able to run 4 days last week, but by this past weekend I was in too much pain to do much of anything other than keep breathing. Luckily, that got resolved earlier this week. And now it’s race weekend. As you can see, my whole situation hasn’t been ideal since early November.

This week I was able to get in one run yesterday on the treadmill. I would have liked one last jaunt on trails, but it was unbelievably cold. As in you needed to dress like the kid from ‘A Christmas Story’ to survive. So I decided a 3 mile run on the treadmill would suffice, and it felt pretty good. I was still having some throbbing-type pain from Tuesday’s root canal, but I think I’ll be good to go tomorrow.

This is random, but running-related. My new running log for this year arrived yesterday evening. Unfortunately, Runner’s World stopped making the old running log that I’ve used for seven years (at least I couldn’t find them anywhere online). So I had to find a new one, and this is the one that I liked best. I hate that I had to switch, though.

We’ll see how tomorrow goes. My expectations aren’t too high, but maybe I’ll surprise myself. I am excited for the race, I’m just not sure how happy I may be during the it! 🙂

Do you use an exercise log to track your workouts? If so, is it paper or electronic?
Did you workout routine survive the holidays?