Anna's Running Astronomer Blog

This will be a quick one, a sign of life from my side.   I have not written a post in over a month. At the end of June, just as coronavirus cases in Texas started to increase dramatically, we flew to Switzerland, where we spent the month of July. After the March-June quarantine period and the stress of organizing an international move during a pandemic, I needed a timeout from everything. And I finally managed to relax, after all the chaos of the previous months.   I still ran in July (just over 200 km, in fact), and I did so with a commitment only to my physical and mental peace. A few days ago, we finally moved to our new home, North East England, and I am back to blogging and running with a fresh mind and new motivation!   So far, I went on two exploratory runs (10 and 11 km, yesterday and today), and I am blown away by the stunning beauty of the English countryside up here. I am also really enjoying the hills so far, but ask me again in a few months ;) 

Sometimes we don’t run because of a training schedule or calorie burn, but because the mind requires it. Today’s run was certainly scheduled, but I would have dragged myself out even if it had been a rest day.   It’s our last day in the US, the last day in our house here, which is full of boxes and suitcases. The car is sold, the house is sold, and we have plane tickets, but the light at the end of the tunnel is not very bright: COVID cases in Texas are at an alarming all-time high, and we have a long trip with two layovers before us. The excitement for my new job has moved to the background of my brain, and right now I am simply freaking out about having to move during a pandemic.   And it is in moments like these, when I just want to roll up into a ball in a corner, that running becomes my anchor. I was really tired this morning when I went out, and I hit a wall at just 3 km. For a moment I thought I would not get past 5 km, but the intercontinental-pandemic-move-stress kick...

I’m a scientist. Call me weird but I love data, graphs, and statistics. That’s why I am giving the Strava subscription a try, as opposed to just the free membership. What I consider a very insightful graph is the one showing overall fitness: simply put, it relates the relative effort to the training load. So, for example, if you suddenly increase your training load and the activities require a lot of effort, your calculated fitness will go down.   The fitness plot of my last year perfectly depicts how things went and how they are going now, although I am not sure where the extrapolation (the dashed bit at the end) comes from :P The little orange circles are races: you can see that I ran a few fall races last year, and I was in pretty good shape (actually, the best shape I had ever been in). Then, mid-October, I started having a few health problems which I didn’t manage to shake until April! After Christmas, I had a bit of an up-hill period, but then I was swamped with job interview...

I have this VERY annoying thing which one would not really expect from a person who runs some 50 km a week: my ankles and feet swell up. Not a lot, but enough to make my legs feel stiff and heavy. I guess that it’s a combination of being a woman, having a desk job ( if you thought that being an astrophysicist is all stargazing I have to disappoint you: we spend most of the time in front of the computer), and, counterintuitively, running (see for example this very interesting post). The last particularly seems to be the case after long runs in hot conditions, so exactly what we have here in West Texas.   Although the 15 km I ran yesterday is not really a lot, it’s enough to team up with the heat and me working at my computer all morning and lead to those heavy legs. So today is a “compression socks day”. I only have one pair of compression socks, they   are long and I typically use them when I go ski touring, but they are incredibly comfortable and give almost immediate relie...

Weekends mean long(er) runs for me. Not that my weekday daily routine is very different from weekends nowadays, but I will be going back to the office at some point, and keeping a regular schedule also helps with COVID morale.   I try to keep my long runs as easy as possible, although I am notoriously bad at pacing myself. This typically leads to tired legs much sooner into a long run than what I would like to, but I am getting better at it. For my 15 km run today I was lucky enough that the sky was completely overcast and temperatures nice and low (some 19 degrees C). Of course, the usual West Texas wind was still a constant companion, but without the blazing sun I felt a lot stronger. Surprisingly it rained on me for a bit (I even had to stand under a tree for a few minutes), but I guess I should get used to it since we are moving to Northeast England soon ;) I even finished strong, getting a little faster over the last 2-3 kilometers, something that usually is not the case for ...

After four consecutive running days, today is a rest day, which means that I am putting in a strength workout. Of course, due to a certain pandemic, this happens at home instead of in a gym, which really means that I try to find a quiet spot in the house that does not have a billion Lego pieces all over the floor. After hitting enter on my computer to launch a program I just finished scripting, I roll out my mat, put some music on, and go through my 45-minute core and HIIT routine. Some days (not today...) I also throw in some 25 minutes upper body strength as well. As usual, at regular intervals of a few minutes, I’m interrupted by one kid or the other. If nothing else it adds on an extra multitasking component to the workout ;)   For the first few years of being a runner I never did core or strength workouts on top of my running, nor did I ever manage to squeeze in other types of cross-fit training sessions, although these are of course part of most training plans. I deeply regre...