A Passion for Running

Tonight was my best run yet.

I headed out expecting to have to plough through a couple of miles of snow like I did yesterday – and yesterday was a tough two miles.

But, tonight, I only had to plough through about 400 meters of heavy snow. The rest wasn’t too bad. Tonight was also the second night I took my heart rate monitor along for the ride and I was bound and determined to keep my heart rate low.

Mission accomplished. My average heart rate was 154 – a very good LSD heart rate. You can view the data and graphs here. And the reward was a substantially longer 43 minute run – about 20 minutes longer! It wasn’t very far, and it was really slow, but that’s not the goal at all right now. The goal is time on the feet. The pace and distance will improve by a dedication to base training. I remember very clearly being here before – when my friend and coach, Andrew took me down this path a few years ago toward two marathon personal bests.

I think Lydiard would have been happy with my effort tonight. I’m going to be alright.

My consecutive days of exercise streak is now at six days, with five out of six of those days having been runs. In other news, I finally mustered the courage to stand on Lori’s scale and found that the news wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I thought I’d be between 215 and 225, and it turns out I’m only 204.

Ok, “only” is a poor descriptor – especially when I ponder the fact that, at my peak training three years-ish ago, I was a minuscule 162. Now, 162 is probably not a weight I’d ever maintain for long so that’s not going to be my target weight.

My target weight – for now – is to be 180 by my birthday in June. That works out to a weight loss target of 24 pounds in 24 weeks.

One pound a week is very do-able, I’d say.

I’m alive. And have begun running again. And this time, I will not stop. I really want to run again.

I’m horribly out of shape. I mean horribly out of shape. Like, really, really horribly. But I don’t care.

I’ve run three times in three days. Each one 22 to 23 minutes long. Each one blazingly slow. Those last three sentences should give you a glimpse into my current focus. Run often – every day if at all possible. Don’t worry about fast or far. Just put in the minutes on my feet – progress will look after itself.

I’ve been here before. I know how this works. I know what to do.

Today’s run (the 3rd one) was run in a negative split and I didn’t feel like a truck ran over me after it was done. That’s progress already!

Happy New Year!

I got the “you can try it out” from my therapist on Monday so, today, I tried it out.

No shoulder pain. No …other bad stuff. Just 30 minutes of good, non-stop running. Not so much as a tweak or an ache. It all felt good.

I’m going to give credit to years of running – especially the high-mileage year leading up to my layoff for today being so easy. It would seem that, I was born to run.