Different approaches to the same goal

Not one of our more active weekends.  MIL is in town staying with us for the weekend because she has a nearby work assignment during the week.  So we are dragging her along on our errands and house-hunting adventures.  We were walking around the neighborhood of a house we are going to look at and found a gem of a second hand store where I picked up a nice little book for our future children.



Hopefully this gives them an edge at Hogwatts

 Nightingale has been coming to the downtown site to do some running with one of our friends. They are training for the Detriot Half Marathon so it makes sense for Nightingale to meet up with her before the sun gets too hot.  With MIL in town, Nightingale was anxty about getting home as quick as possible. 

This is one of the ways we don't operate on the same wavelength.  I figure her mom is capable of keeping herself entertained for a few hours while we go about our routine.  Nightingale believes that her mom is in town and they should spend every available moment together.  It's probably how normal people do it but I was raised by wolves.

We still made time for breakfast and social maintenance with our runner friends.  SHB asked me how my run went and I didn't seize my moment quick enough so she started talking about hers.  With her I feel like I have to either say everything I want to say in that moment or yield the floor.  After a 12 mile run, it sometimes takes me a minute to gather my thoughts.  I did make a little better progress getting talk time in at the Starbucks though that is probably because there were only three of us.  When there's an audience SHB doesn't give up center stage very easily.

In any event, this run was not as good as the 15 and 16 milers probably because it was hotter and humid,  and I also wasn't properly hydrated especially since Nightingale, MIL and I went through four bottles of wine.  At least I did go to bed early enough even though they stayed up and argued politics until midnight.

It's hard for me to determine if my struggles are simply that I haven't run this much mileage in a couple years and my body is making normal adjustments or if it's my knees, or both.  To be sure, the knees do experience some soreness.  There's also some tightness in the quads, hamstrings and even IT band.  This is usually somewhat normal for runners training for a marathon.  I need to err on the side of caution however and slow down or cut out miles if it gets to be too much however and live to run another day.  After next week's 18 miler I should know better whether it's soreness or pain.

So this is the last weekend that DrDrea and Tracy are both leaving Chicago on Monday.  DrDrea is moving to Houston to be with her husband and Tracy is starting a new position in DC.   Normally we'd do something with them this weekend but again, with the MIL in town, it isn't very feasible.  I hope DrDrea understands: welcome to Married Life.