Dear Bloggy World,

I have not forgotten about you. The busyness of life the past couple of weeks has finally settled down. The kids are all out of school, and I'm trying to figure out how to fit in runs and workouts while wrangling a 9-, 7-, and 4-year old--- all of whom complain when I say, "Hey, let's go to the Y!"

This is day 3 of summer vacation. So far, we've had 1 or 2 big fights per day, but it could be worse I suppose. They tend to get it out of their system first thing in the morning and do pretty well the rest of the day. Oh, the joys of parenting! The key is having at least one activity that gets us out of the house every day.

I've run a whopping 4 miles this week-- all treadmill miles. The past 3 weeks have been sorta awesome on the running front. I've got a 10K coming up in 3 weeks. I have only been running 3 days per week and have averaged 15-19 miles per week. This is a down-time for me regarding long-distance racing, so I'm focusing on building strength and speed. Three days per week feels like a vacation.

I've been doing strength training exercises, hill sprints, intervals, tempo runs, and even a few easy runs (and cross training once per week). Perhaps the runs have been going TOO well, encouraging me to do too much. I find myself with a sore right calf. It had been bugging me just a little for a few months (maybe since the marathon?). I admit I am TERRIBLE about stretching, and I think it had been getting tighter and tighter. You know what happens when you get a tight calf muscle? Shin splints. (A physical therapist explained the connection to me.) On Monday, I was doing some pretty intense intervals with a few hill sprints thrown in and I had a shooting pain in my right shin. Twice. After the second time, I had sense enough to stop!

Since then, I stretched a ton and ran a slow, easy 2 miles. It felt ok. I swam for 10-15 minutes at the Y. (Wow, that's hard! I swam the length of the pool 10 times and thought I was going to die!) I took a 55-minute yoga class and walked for 30 minutes on the treadmill. Today, I'm going to try to run 4 easy miles. On Saturday, I have a big run planned---an 8-miler with 6 miles at tempo pace---10K pace+ 10 or 15 seconds. The tempo portion is on the actual 10K course I'll be running in 3 weeks. If my calf is hurting, I'll definitely back off and run slower and shorter though. We'll see how it goes!

Next week, I start a new running class at the YMCA. It is a regular group exercise class called Intermediate Running. I'll be doing form drills, speed work, hill training, and a 2-4 mile run with whomever shows up each week on Thursdays at 8:30 a.m.. That's my summer job---one hour a week! I think I can handle that! This class has never been offered before. It's hot. There are lots of classes at 8:30. But what if NO ONE shows up???