Great weather for Yoga....

Today's cool temps made it a perfect day to get back to yoga class. I needed it too! I had felt my muscles tightening up over the last few weeks and it felt great to stretch them out. I told our instructor, Karen, that I was starting to have some IT band issues. If I am still having them on Sunday, it won't be her fault! We stretched out the IT bands big time and worked hard on core strength and our quads.

Almost every issue of Runners World has at least one article on core strength and/or flexibility. The exercises almost always are something we do in yoga. I am convinced that practicing yoga long term will really improve my running and lengthen the number of years that I can run.

I've mapped out one 18 mile route for Sunday, but I may tweak it. It will have some pretty big hills in it but there just isn't much of a way for me to avoid that and stay near the house. It really kind of amazes me how far 18 miles is when you map it out. In my mind, I plotted out what I thought was about 12 miles and it was only 7 when I put it on the mapmyrun.com site. Hopefully the temps will rise to the mid 40's on Sunday and the showers will hold off. I really want to get this run in.

I will be glad when the Swamp Rabbit Trail is completed. It will make long runs a little more enjoyable because you will be able to avoid traffic. You also will have the option of point to point runs if you want. The city seems to be moving very quickly on the parts they are responsible for, I hope the county catches up quickly. I know it will be difficult to find funding in this recession, so I don't expect much work to be done anytime soon.