A crisp beautiful morning made me glad I'd gotten up early for a morning run. Temps were in the upper 30s, calm, and not a cloud in the sky. It's been about month since I've hit the roads on a weekday morning and the sun has quickly rebounded from the hour we stole for DST, it was nearly dawn at 6:15. Actually dawn is 6:32 this morning and we are gaining 1 - 2 minutes every day.

An easy run and I was hoping to throw in some running drills that I posted about a few weeks before the marathon. I watched a demonstration of several of these drills on YouTube last night but after a 1 mile warmup I couldn't recall many of them and was stuck with faking my way through the two drills that I thought I remembered correctly. One from the video and one from an article I read a while back. Adding these dynamic run-like exercises is supposed to increase overall speed and fitness, reduce injury and make you a better more consistent runner.

I suppose if I want to do this properly I should work on the drills at a track or in a place where I can read about what I am supposed to do just before I do it. That seems like a little to much effort when I really just want to run so I'll instead keep it to these half remembered efforts once or twice a week. Things will eventually begin to stick and maybe become routine.

This morning was "Getting the knees up" where you take quick steps lifting your knees high and snapping the heel of your foot to your but for 25 meters or so. I repeated 3 times through my run. I also bounced up a few hills. This is very much a running motion but instead of lightly pushing off with each step you push off hard trying to get some air and sort of bounce up the hill. It is difficult to sustain for long but a perfect way to get the blood pumping on a cool morning.

Other than that easy miles on this route. 5.7 miles in 47 minutes.