Thursday, February 10, 2011

It Wasn't Pretty, But I Did It...

I said I was going to go for a run this morning, and I kept my word. It was only a mile, but this is the first mile that I've run since October so that has to count for something.

Let me back up a bit, and then I'll get to the run....

If you read yesterday's post, you know that I have been following my friend's progress as he trains for a 10k. We chatted a bit yesterday and he got me motivated to get back into it. I told him I was going to start by going for a short run in the morning. I was pretty excited about it. This was all during my normal work day. Unfortunately, Wednesdays are my day from hell for the week and I don't get to go home and relax at 5 pm. I had to go to class until close to 10 pm that night. (More on this in another post.) As the night slowly passed, I started thinking more about how tired I was going to be in the morning and how I was not going to want to get up and run. But every time that thought came into my head, I told myself to stop whining and deal with it.

So I get home from school right at 10:00 and my amazing boyfriend had dinner waiting for me. I know, eating at 10 pm is not ideal, but when you work from 8:00 to 5:00 and then go to class from 5:30 to 9:40, you don't have much of a choice. So we had dinner (baked cod, roasted squash and zucchini, and cous cous), watched some TV and talked about our day. I think we made it to bed a little after 11:00 and I crashed.

When my alarm went off this morning, I got up surprisingly easy. I tip toed out of the bedroom so I wouldn't wake Mike and got dressed in my running gear that I had remembered to set out before bed. I leashed up the mutt (this really is a term of endearment in my house--we absolutely LOVE this creature.) and headed out into the cold. We did our normal walk around the block to get his business out of the way and then I started the Garmin and away we went. I think Roman was a little shocked when we didn't make the turn back to home, but he quickly got over it and fell in stride beside me. He really is a great running buddy...as long as there isn't a soul around to distract him.

We finished our slow mile in right at 11 minutes (Ugh...I have a lot of work to do to get back in to the groove) and then walked the last couple blocks back home. I'm glad I misjudged the route a little because I needed those blocks to convince my lungs to stop screaming from the shock of the cold air. I probably could have gone further than a mile, but it's been so long that I didn't want to push it too much. I vividly remember the pain I felt while pushing through the Army Ten Miler and I don't want to deal with that again.

I'm not going to run tomorrow. For one, I want to access the situation and make sure my back is healed like I think it is. And the other reason is that Friday is the one day of the week that I don't have morning mutt duties. So I'm going to take advantage and sleep until 6:00. I do have Saturday off from my part time job, so I'm already planning on another run then. I might even push it up to a mile and a half!

3 comments:

  1. Yay! That is a great run! I hope your back is feeling better so that you can start racking up the miles.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Let me get this straight, you haven't run in like forever and you still clock 11 minutes for a mile? Is the dog pulling you?? No fair! I've been going a month and if I ever BREAK 11 minutes I'm ready to celebrate at Ihop! Perhaps in another month I might be up to your speed, but by then, you'll be cruising half-marathons as your morning jog!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just came across your blog--- what fun, I went back to VCU to get a 2nd bachelor's in nursing! I currently live in Richmond and I am also a runner. Small world!

    ReplyDelete