08 July 2009

Back To The Basics

When I get passionate about something, I tend to overdo it and either get frustrated and stop or quickly get bored and forget about it. Running is the first thing that I have truly become passionate about and continued to do for any extended period of time. Unfortunately overdoing it in running can lead to injury.

Thanks to Runners world Beginner forums and reading other running blogs, I was smart enough to give myself rest when my foot felt wrong. I really wanted to start running high mileage weeks and pushed myself little too fast, but luckily I stopped and rested before it got too bad.

Today was my first run in about two and a half weeks. I took it really easy and pretty much went back to basics. I ran for 5 minutes and walked for 1 minute. I repeated this for a total of 42 minutes and finished with about 3.5 miles. It felt really good to run again, and strangely it felt really good to get back to basics and run like a beginner again.

I am going to repeat the run/walk routine for a few runs and then continue conditioning myself until marathon training starts next month for the Philadelphia Marathon.

I am no longer focused on running 5 to 6 days a week. That will come in time and it may be a long time. I know that it is more important to get in 3 or 4 quality runs a week rather than run 6 mediocre runs.

Here is to falling in love with running... again and again!

3 comments:

Lindsay said...

great job getting back out there! sounds like you have the right mindset - start small, baby steps, stay healthy, keep enjoying it, and overtime you'll naturally find yourself running more! sure i am running 6-7 days/week now but definitely have not been doing that for forever. (just started throwing in some 7 day weeks as a matter of fact, and i've been running since '99! ok, well not totally consistently since then.)

anyway, glad your foot is feeling better and you didn't push yourself into an injury. enjoy your running and training for philly!

Stacey said...

listening to your body, well done. So many of us ignore the signs and symptoms until it is too late!

:-)

Some guy named John said...

It does sometimes feel good to sort of start again, doesn't it? Good job on taking a very wise, cautious approach.