It’s that awkward time of the year for me where I don’t have a training plan. It’s not really a liberating feeling for me, it’s more like “what the heck should I do?” kind of feeling! So I’m just kinda winging it right now. I suppose I need to write out some structured plan so I don’t run every day (not good for me!). Last week I had a bit of a grouchy knee. I asked ChatGTP and it turns out I had “runners’s knee”. Pretty common. It said I could still run, just slower and avoiding hills. Alrighty then! Let’s go! I continued with running and also added in a bit more strength training this week. It was a very social week with some holiday events sprinkled in. I ran 30 miles this week, and biked 7 miles. Here’s what went down….
Mon – 5.5 mile run. Each day my knee is improving! And yay, I got to wear my vest!
Tues – 3 treadmill miles. I almost went back to sleep this morning when my early alarm went off. So dark outside! So cold inside! I lingered for 8 mins and then made it downstairs for my treadmill run. As always, I’m glad I did it! A nice start to the day.
As it was mentioned last week, ski trips have been planned. We have Epic passes this year and lofty goals to ski 20 days in the season. Last year I skied 13 days, which was a lot for us. I already have two trips out West planned and another one in the works. So… it’s time to start getting ready for them! I asked my good old friend ChatGTP to build a training program for me. For the most part I was happy with the results and how it offered to make a chart with visuals and checkboxes. However, I had to laugh when I saw what it created. Ooof on the spelling! Yep, AI has a few quirks.
Weds – 35 mins elliptical. I gave up on the ChatGTP plan already and found a series on YouTube for ski conditioning. 15 mins and a 5 week series. Perfect! The one I used last year was pretty intense. I wanted to back off on the intensity a bit this year! But I will try to incorporate more leg work at the gym too.
Thurs – 3.25 mile run. A short run today. A dreary looking day!
I had a fun night out with my friend. We had a delicious meal (we needed even more time to chat!) and a went to a show at a local college, Bowling Green State University. I was hooked when I saw they were doing a musical with songs by the Go-Go’s. Had I read the rest of the information I would have learned it was based on a play during Shakespearean times (hard to understand English!). The play had a LGBTQ theme. It did feature a lot of Go-Go’s songs which I really liked. Quite an interesting performance, not at all what I was expecting!
Fri – 6.5 mile run. I used a pair of old racing shoes today. That’s the only bad thing about shoes – I always want to move on to the next new pair and I have a closet full of shoes with 40% life left! I need to work on wearing some of them out so they can be retired.
Friday night was a trip to the Toledo Zoo for the lighting of the huge Christmas tree. This year they also had a drone show! There were 400 drones and they created some really cool designs. Unfortunately Alan couldn’t join us because he spent the entire day down for the count with vertigo! It’s awful, and so odd!
Sat – 9 mile long run. Alan is feeling much better today. Yay!! For fun today’s shoe was a pair of Brooks tester shoes, a prototype that was top secret at the time I tested it, so I got no information about the model. They were from 4 years ago. I don’t see any current models that look like these, but I think they are Hyperion Elite? I think they have a plate in them because they are speedy! Also, I saw a pack of runners approaching me on the trail. I have no idea who they were but one guy did say “Hi Lisa!” hmmmmm, I wonder who the heck it was.
Date night was a theater show at the University of Toledo. It was “Every Christmas Story Ever Told”. It was pretty funny! They did pack in every favorite into a 90 min show. Cheers for local theater!
Sun – 5K Turkey Trot! The Toledo Roadrunners Turkey Trot is a prediction run. Make a good guess and if you’re in the top 10 closest predictions, you win a turkey. NO peeking at Garmin or time keeping devices allowed. Sydney won a turkey! Our plan is always to run together, but space out the finish times. This year we guessed 28:15, 28:30, and 28:45. We finished in 28:51, good enough for a 7th place winner. Winner Winner, Turkey dinner! This is the third year someone in our family has won a turkey at this event. We are good guessers!!
In the afternoon we rode on the mountain bike trail (53 degrees!). It was a great day for a ride! Ahhh, she’s a beauty 🙂
Need some more inspiration? I’m linking up with Deborah at Confessions of a Mother Runner and Kim from Running on the Fly for their Weekly Run Down. Check out all of the fun blogs there!
Q: Do you use ChatGTP (or other AI)?
I enjoy using it for all sorts of questions – travel, cooking, medical, work!
Nice job this week! I’m jealous of your warmer (50s) weather. I am enjoying using Chat GPT for things too – the other weekend I happened to have 5 hours without anyone home so I put in my to do list and asked Chat GPT to make my schedule for those 5 hours. It was fun!
That’s an interesting use of AI! We use Copilot at work and it’s super helpful when I get stuck on my projects.
That would be so tough to guess an accurate finish time! I know my average 5K time, but that varies with the weather, terrain, state of health, etc. Congrats to your daughter!
One additional wrinkle in the guessing game for this 5K route is that it’s hilly! We ended up walking the top part of the hill. So it was an extra good guess! I think it would be harder to guess what a “racing” 5K time would be instead of just “going for a run”, you know? We were all running a comfortable pace.
I feel you on the “not having a training plan” conundrum… I usually come up with a plan (but do much better when I can follow something tailored for a race).
So funny that you saw runners on the trail and one greeted you and you didn’t know who it was LOL
We’re supposed to use AI at work (and it freaks me out because I work for a scientific agency and AI/Chatgpt is NOT where it needs to be in regard to spitting out correct information) but it can be useful for some tasks.
I’ll be running a turkey trot on Thanksgiving morning. I haven’t heard of the time guessing thing, but that’s kinda cool. 🙂
Our local running club has at least two of those prediction runs a year. It’s nice because everyone has a chance to win! You don’t need to be the fastest runner.
Ouch, don’t trust ChatGPT with those things. It hallucinates a big percentage of the time! I only use LLMs for brain storming only, most recently to get ideas for the new blog name, or to get answers to questions I know search engines can’t handle, and sometimes to get code snippets (some very useful PHP snippets on my blogs came from ChatGPT). It sometimes works and sometimes not. For brainstorming it’s great! My best experience with AI was this weekend when I used an AI tool my husband recommended and built a website/blogging app (!). I’ll continue using that tool when I need it but otherwise I’m not happy about using AI. When I used Adobe I tested their AI tools but the results were laughable and I never use AI in design or graphics.
How fun with the prediction Turkey Trot! Congratulations to Sydney! I hope your knee gets better.
I agree – I certainly wouldn’t trust AI for a lot of tasks, but it does point me in the right direction when I’m not sure where to start searching. And certainly not a replacement for a doctor or real medical advice when needed! I think it did a good job diagnosing runner’s knee though.
I don’t use ChatGPT but maybe I should start. I like how it told you to keep running- and apparently it was right because your knee has been getting better! (I agree I wouldn’t trust it 100% though).
Sounds like you had a lot of fun this week as usual! Glad Alan’s vertigo was short-lived. I know several people who struggle with that and it is very weird (and debilitating, while it’s happening!)
Congrats to Sydney! That’s a fun race format.
TBH, ChatGTP did say to run 30-50% of what my regular mileage was… so oops, I failed on that one. Alan had a similar episode back in 2019 with vertigo symptoms. He was on the couch for a few days back then when a doctor friend told me about the procedure you could do to reset the inner ear crystals. That really did the trick! Thankfully it’s not a recurring issue for him because it sure is debilitating!
Yay for Sydney winning a turkey again this year at the race. You guys are good guessers!
Perhaps use your off-season between races to put miles on your old shoes so you can retire them? Do you also transfer them to gardening shoes once they have too many miles on them for running? That’s what I do.
To answer your question, I used Google’s Gemini to design my new blog banner! I think it did a great job! Also, I used Gemini to make two different challenges for this winter for my friends and me to get us outside on our bikes and walking instead of staying inside. Maybe I’ll talk about it at our next coffee linkup.
How fun that you enjoyed those two plays so much. We saw a play this past summer at USU while in Utah. It was fantastic! That’s one of the things I would love about living in/near a college town.
I’ve never seen a drone light show in real life. Sounds really cool!
I have a pair of Endorphin Speeds at my gardening shoes! I do buy them at a rate faster than I am using them up, so I do need to keep using the old ones. Yes, good plan – I need to store the better ones until training season starts again!
My husband and I met in college and we went to see the theater shows several times on dates. We are University of Toledo alumni. It’s a perfect date night for college kids since it’s free for students!
Excellent guesswork and turkey-winning! One of my clients wished me a Happy Thanksgiving today – from a company I do localisation from US to UK English …!!
I don’t use AI because editing clients are using AI for editing, translator clients’ agencies are using it for translating and then cutting their rates so they have to cut mine, and once it’s properly used for transcription, that part of my work’s gone, too, and I’m 13 years off state retirement age. So I’m not a fan!
Ugh, that sucks about AI stealing your work. That is a definite downside of the technology. I always read about how AI is going to kill my programming job too, but I don’t see that happening for my position – at least not at my company.