Sunday, August 12, 2012

Starting over

It seems like I've been plagued with injuries all year.  My mileage has suffered greatly and so has my motivation and health in general.  I've been having some issues with my Achilles tendon being really stiff and causing me some pain and with that lack of running my cardio has suffered.  When the achilles was finally starting to feel better I started to add some mileage back. I had the naive notion that I'd still be able to go out and run the mileage I had before without much difficulty.  Boy was I wrong.  It's hard not to feel discouraged when you look back at being able to run 13 miles with no problem to not being able to run 3 without walking a little.  I'm learning to cut myself some slack.  If I push myself too hard to get back to where I was before I'll just end up injured again and the rest of my running goals would have to wait.  Now, I'm trying to be patient with my recovery and my health so I can stay healthy and reach all of those goals.  I want to run a full marathon in 2013, which means that I need to slowly start building my mileage back up.  The one that I want to run is not until September of 2013 so I do have some time to get my body ready.  The best part is that I have a boyfriend that is supportive of my health goals and that will continue to motivate and encourage me to work toward them.

So, I'm starting over.  I'm not going to worry about what has come before now, I'm only going to focus on where I'm going and what I need to do to get there. I'll get there.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

First long run of the year

I haven't done many group runs since I started running, partly because there weren't that many close to me and partly because I was worried that I would slow the group down.  The answer to that?  Sole Sports opened up a store at 59th and Union Hills that is 10 minutes from my house, door to door.  I've been to two of them so far.  The first one on December 24th, where there were just two of us plus the group run leader.  Today it was just myself and the run leader.  On the 24th I was self conscious because I hadn't put in many miles since my Half Marathon so I knew my pace would be slow, but the group didn't seem to mind.  They were very incouraging, even though my pace was just over 11 minutes per mile.  I kept begging them to leave me behind, because we all knew that at the pace they were capable of running they would catch up with me on the way back, not to mention pass me. They wouldn't.  I hesitated going back to run with them again, but this morning dragged myself from my warm bed and headed over to the store.  I was at first concerned because I didn't see anyone in the store so thought they had already left, but nope, there was Jeff coming up from the back of the store.  I think we were both happy to see eachother since both of us really wanted to run this morning. (If no one had shown up, he would have had to stay at the store and not been able to go running)  The first mile was 10:45 and I asked him to keep me right about there since I wanted to improve on my last long run.  Apparently my legs had other ideas, because Jeff said that I controlled the pace keeping us at 10:30 and under finishing the last two miles in 10:20 and 10:18.  What a great run!  I learned a lot about the new guy from Sole Sports, and I learned that with proper nutrition and a consistent training plan I'm capable of more than I thought.  Can't wait for the next one. :)

Happy Running!