Much needed rest day

Running:
Running continues to go well so far this year. Today I took my first day off since late December 2010. Yesterday I managed to get in my first 20 miler of 2011. I’ve put on a lot of miles with no time off, so the end of that run hurt a bit. I finished the run in 2:45:52 which wasn’t a bad time considering the volumes I have been running. I figure I’m due for a break before my body makes me take one. I’ll likely use this week as a cut back week. Then I need to decide if I will run the Trailbreaker marathon the first week in April. If I do think I will run it, I will not run anything too hard for a few weeks. Maybe one day of speed work and a moderate length run of 15 miles or so on the weekends. If I’m not going to run it, I will start to target peaking for the 50K race in May. I would likely start to pick up with some hill work and more tempo style runs for the next several weeks. I continue to run both outside and on the treadmill. I have put more miles on the treadmill this year already than any other year of my life. The one thing this has done is allow me to be consistent. There was never a day when I couldn’t run or didn’t want to run because of the weather. Totals through 3/13:
WTD 63
MTD 123
YTD 603
ODO 27874

Hunting:
I still have not been out in the woods to retrieve my stands. I contacted the land owner about a month ago to say I would be coming out one of these weekends, but something just keeps coming up. If I don’t head up north this weekend hopefully I can get it done. The last couple of weeks I have seen so many deer in the fields near my house. One day last week on the way to work in the field closest to me I counted 8 deer. That’s just the ones I could see in the field and a little ways into the woods. I didn’t see any with antlers so likely they have fallen off by this time. Many of these deer are also coming into my back yard searching for the last leftovers. The dogs are frequently barking at them when they notice they are out there. This is a real good sign for next season. I don’t ever recall seeing this many nearby over the previous 7 winters in this house. Just as I was beginning to feel guilty about not doing much late season scouting I read this blog post at bowhunting.com. It makes sense to me and made me feel better that I wasn’t wasting my time.

Gardening:Two winter chores still to finish. I have a couple of large brush piles that I want to burn before I lose all the snow. If I don’t get it done over the next few days I may lose my chance for this year. I still have to prune about ½ of my fruit trees before the weather gets warm too. I still should have a few weeks for this chore. This weekend I noticed my fish came out of hiding. I hadn’t seen them for months. I also noticed several frogs had crawled out. I guess two signs that spring can’t be far away.