Today’s plan was to meet up with Amy, Carrie, Julie, and Thon and run the first couple of miles of their 10-12 miler (their warmup) and then turn around and run back for a total of four miles. Of course, this meant that I was waking up at 5:00 am to go and do less than 45 minutes of running but, hey, at least that means I had my day free.

We met up at O’Henry middle school and, after a little chatting, headed out. I was thinking that we’d just run Exposition up to 35th and head West towards the hills, which would have given me a nice little four mile loop (plus a 1/4 mile cooldown walk) opportunity. Instead, we headed South towards LAB and the trail, so I ended up running to the Pfluger footbridge and back again for what I thought was about four miles.

Running out was a bit faster than I had really planned. I didn’t bring my GPS with me (I’ve lost a lot of my old running habits), but Carrie clocked us at around 8:30 when I asked her. It felt like a pretty solid run, and I definitely slowed down on the way back (and stopped for water at the MoPac bridge, too). By the end I was doing a bit of a mile-26 shuffle and my knees were a little tired, but I felt generally decent. It turns out that the course is more like 4.5 miles, or 50% further than my last “long” run since coming back, which probably has something to do with it.

While more than I wanted to do today (and yes, I remember fondly the days when I would just worry about getting a course right “within a couple of miles,” that does put me at a whopping 10.2 miles for the week! Now I have to be patient, only increasing that by 10% each week, until I’m back up at a more reasonable 35-40 mpw level, and it’ll all be good. Of course, it would help if 10.2 wasn’t also the number of pounds I’d put on since being laid up … but all things considered, that’s a lot better than it could have been.

Another 3-4 months and I should be right back where I was last year. Er, yay?

Popularity: 4%