slowly

Ran today for the first time since the half marathon, nearly 4 weeks ago. First injury, then holiday, then, well, life got in the way. But now I am recommitting to this training process. Slowly.

Decided to backtrack quite a bit and run-walk... 5 minute warmup walk, 5 minute run, one minute walk, repeating the run-walk cycle 5 times, then a 5 minute cooldown. I knew I was in trouble when I looked at my watch, already feeling a bit winded, and saw that I had been shuffling along for about 90 seconds. Yikes.

But I stuck with it, running back and forth, up and down the very slight hills in the hood. Various things hurt at various times: Feet? Check. Knees? Check. Hip? Check. Also felt a few random twinges and "weaknesses", which I attributed to my body thinking "What's this? Oh, yeah, I remember..."

Very tired very quickly -- even my shoulders felt tight -- but I did manage to get through 4 of the 5 cycles before deciding that discretion was indeed the better part of valour and heading home. Took a stupidly long time to catch my breath. But, hey, it's 20 minutes more than I have run in weeks and weeks. It can only get easier, right?