Weekly Sweats: Back outside!!!

Friends, I got to run outside for the first time in five weeks today and I am so happy about it!  21.45 miles this week with one strength workout and a back owie.  And oh yes I bought another pair of shoes, oh yes I did.

I'm linking up with the Weekly Run Down, please head over to Kim and Deborah to check it out.    

Monday: strength and 4 easy treadmill miles.

Tuesday: 3.3 treadmill miles.  Normally I'd be shooting for 5-6 but I couldn't get the gusto to do more and it came to my attention that something was not right with my lower back.

Wednesday: my back was hosed, so I passed on the weights.  I found that sitting in my office chair was the most painful thing I could do.   I also found that I was unable to pull up my standing desk converter so I got an assist from my husband.  Normally I only stand for 30-60 minute stretches, but I found that standing up agreed with my back very much.

Thursday: off since my back wasn't 100%.  After another day of almost entirely standing for the workday got things got a whole lot better.

Friday: Ready to get my toe back in the water with 4.3 treadmill miles, a whole lotta standing at work.

Saturday: back on the tready for 6.3 miles in single degree temps.

Sunday: it came to my attention that the temperature would be in the 30s later in the day, so I played the long con and delayed my run until the afternoon.  3.25 miles outside and yes it was odd to have to move my body instead of reacting to the treadmill belt, but it was so nice to be back out there.  And don't think I'm throwing shade at the mill, it's all the nicer to have been able to keep up with my running for the past 5 weeks/121 miles.

What's Next

I am one workout away from finishing the 2nd phase of  The New Rules of Lifting for Women. If I hadn't hurt my back I would have finished it this week and then taken next week off as prescribed by the plan so I'll sneak the last workout in sometime next week and call it good.  Mileage wise I've kind of already had my cutback a week early, so I imagine I'll be doing something mid-20s for mileage.

I can't quite read the crystal ball that is Accuweather to see how the weather is going to play out next week.  Temperature wise everything looks good but we also have more storms and a lotta snow to get melted so the roads could go either way safety wise.  I quipped a few weeks ago that my fitness goals for February were to watch season 5 of Outlander (achieved) and season 9 of Call the Midwife, and I'm two episodes away so if I have to be inside for exactly two more workouts I'll be good with that;-)

More shoes???  Geez!!!

For context: I've bought between 2-4 pairs of shoes a year for the past few years and so far this year I've already bought 3 pairs of shoes: one pair returned, one pair kept, and now another pair purely for looks.  As soon as I saw this year's Luckys I couldn't get that hundred dollar bill out of my wallet fast enough.  If I'd known the Luckys were coming out this soon I'd have held off on trying the Launch 8, but as it is I can use the "boring" gray shoes for bad weather days and the "cute" shoes when the roads are dry.

Are they beautiful?  Or beautifully ugly?  IRL they are greener than they are in the picture and really it's about the gold shamrocks anyway.