well, despite the bone-chilling cold, i ran all the miles i set out to run this week. i did the 6 miles today and it felt great. i finished feeling like i could have easily run another couple of miles. and that's despite the fact that there were 4 or 5 inches of fresh snow on the ground, which made a bit tough to keep my footing. the last half mile was on relatively clear asphalt and it actually felt really good to hit a clean stride - no pain whatsoever during the run. a few more weeks and i might be ready to officially declare myself fully recovered.

next week, i think i'll keep the junk miles the same and add a mile or two on to the long run.

i finished up another week of running 3 miles, 4 miles, 3 miles and 5 miles. i ran the 5 miler today and it was one of my best runs since i started running again. i felt strong the entire run, tackled a fairly large hill - at least by midwest standards - and had no pain whatsoever.

i've started to really enjoy running in the snow. today it was coming down at a good clip and it felt good to be out with the wind and the cold and the snow. after a few weeks of running in sub 20 degree weather, it's hard to imagine running in the summer heat and humidity.

next week i'll add a mile on to the long run and see how it goes.

whoohoo! today i reached a personal milestone in my recovery by running five miles. and i did it with four inches of snow on unshovelled sidewalks. despite the cold and snow, the run felt good. i can feel a slight catching where my right leg rotates in the hip socket, but it's not too bad. i have a few exercises from the physical therapist that help get rid of the catching after a run. when i started running again, i'd feel the catching at around a mile, but now i can't feel much of anything until 4 or 4.5 miles, so things seem be slowly healing.

i reached several mini-goals since running 5k on thanksgiving day. after a few weeks of rest, i decided to go slow and ran 2 miles on 4 days for a couple of weeks. then i switched to 3 miles on 4 days, which was rough at the start, but on the first week of the year, i started to feel fairly strong again and felt that i could run another mile or two at the end of each run. so, this week i decided to add a few more miles on the weekly total and ran 3 miles on monday, 4 on tuesday, 3 on thursday and 5 miles today. i think i'll run the same routine next week and see how things go.

i'm slowly gaining confidence and think i might contemplate running a 15 mile local race in may. kris has been talking some crazy talk about running the cleveland marathon in may, but that feels like it might be pushing it too hard. who knows. i'll evaluate things week by week - right now i'm just happy to get out on a regular basis and get a few miles under my belt.