Yesterday I ran for the first time since my 50 mile race a week ago. I’ve had a lot of energy this week and have been itching to run, but I had no idea how my legs would react. They’ve been a little achy all week and I have NOT been a good little girl with icing, stretching, and rolling

Rather than have a set distance, I just ran out the house and decided to see how I felt.

Bike path near my parents' house. It was a beautiful day yesterday!

I had so much energy, but knew I wouldn’t last on a long run, so I decided to do my own little speed workout. Pretty much ran at med- to high- intensity for as long as possible, then walked to catch my breath. And repeat. Pretty scientific, no?

I also took a picture of myself running, but it’s waaay to bad to put up, which is saying a lot. I’ve posted some pretty darned ugly photos before.

Instead, here’s a different running photo (last time I promise):

So serious! Hahaha.

So this week will be my first week “back” in training. The rough plan is to put in 30 miles this week, and 40 the next, and then follow one of the training plans from Relentless Forward Progress. I am going to play it by ear this week since I’m still not sure how my legs are recovering. Note to self: ICE, STRECH, AND ROLL OUT MUSCLES!!! DON’T BE STOOPID AND THINK YOU’LL RECOVERY EASILY!!

On a side note, my life has become a little less aimless as of late. I found out last week that I passed my CSET. For those of you who don’t know, the CSET is the California Subject Exam for Teachers. Since I want to teach high school English, I had to pass 4 subtests despite the fact that I have a B.A. in English. Since I was pretty cocky and didn’t study (um, kinda like how I didn’t train for AR50…), it took me 3 times to pass the last subtest. But I passed, finally, and that’s all that matters to me. What this means is that I’ll be back in school this fall, to student teach for 2 semesters. And in a little over a year, I’ll *hopefully* have my Teaching Credential. Yay! This means that if all goes well, I’ll FINALLY be an adult just months shy of my 30th birthday.

What this also means is that it’s back to work for me! I’m still pursuing getting a personal training certification (from ACE), because I want to have the knowledge as well as the possibility of training in the future. So until school resumes, it looks like I’ll be training part time, studying part time, and back at good ol’ ZombieRunner part time. So if any of y’all have shoe/gear/nutrition/compression/insole/headlamp/etc. questions, I’m your running gear expert! Feel free to comment or email me questions regarding gear anytime.