Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed

In my last post, I mentioned “running at an all-out sprint” in a metaphorical sense. But that reminded me that I should also post about my actual running.

I worried when I first got back outside a few weeks ago that it would take months to build back up to what my mileage was at the end of last summer. My first day back out, I could barely run a mile without gasping. But a week later, I ran five and felt like I could keep going all morning (it’s a far cry from a marathon, but it’s faster progress than I dreamed possible). The human body’s ability to recover is amazing.

I may have pushed myself too hard too fast, though: I’ve been having knee trouble these past few days, so I haven’t been able to run since Tuesday. I’ll be taking tomorrow off too, since we’re leaving early to drive up to Chicago. I’m hoping that by Saturday I’ll be able to run a nice, easy three or four miles and build up over the next two weeks to six or seven. If that turns out to be too ambitious, I’ll settle for a twenty-mile week by mid-April.

And lesson learned: I cannot allow myself to become this lazy next winter just because I get bored on the treadmill. I did a lot of work on the elliptical machines and with weights this past winter, but that doesn’t keep my mileage up. I’ll have to find whatever method it takes to keep me on the treadmill an hour or more at a time, despite the fact that I normally want to jump off after five minutes. The MP3 player in my new Clie is helping — I force myself to keep running for “just one more song.” And then “one more song.” And so on. But it’s a constant struggle, and I don’t have that problem with any other kind of exercise — and I certainly don’t have that struggle when I’m running outdoors.

Anyone have suggestions?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2004 at 12:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.