BRRRRINGGGGGG...Recess Is Over

Not only did I stop running after Missoula, I stopped blogging and unfortunately I stopped reading most of my favorite blogs. My apologies.

After running my last 26.2 miles on July 10, I didn't run another step until October 11 except for the few yards I ran in a sad attempt to play soccer against school kids in Zimbabwe. Like I said I started running again on October 11, three months after Missoula and a Tuesday which traditionally would have been the first run of the week. I guess I should have read my last blog post before I did that. Seems I promised myself and all of you not to run again until November. Ah, well...you know what the say about the best laid plans of men.

I took time off to see if I could get my heel pain healed up. By the first of October the pain had subsided considerably. The only other thing that went up was my weight. I gained a good 10 pounds over the 3 month hiatus, mostly due to bad diet choices - damn sugar! Candy, cookies, cake, pie, ice cream - that about covers the 5 major food groups. All during my time off from running I continued to hike 5 miles a couple of times a week and hit the gym sporadically for weights and cardio on the elliptical, the stairs or the bike. But there's just nothing like running.

Other times when I've come back from injury, I've jumped right back into a 5 day a week schedule with long runs of 10 miles. I mean there's really no good reason to run less than 10 miles on a Saturday morning, right? Well this time I decided to go all the way back to the beginning, maybe further than that. I decided to start with a week day run of 2 miles (hardly worth changing clothes for!) and a weekend long run of 4 miles with plans to only ramp that up a mile each weekend with a couple of cut back weeks along the way.

I've stuck to my promise to myself so far.
The first week, Oct 10-16, I ran 2 miles on Tues, 2.3 on Thurs and 4 on Saturday.
Week 2 was 2.5 miles on Tues, 3 on Thurs and 5 on Saturday.
Week 4 was 3 miles on Tues, 3 more on Thursday and 6 on Saturday. For the 6 I finally joined up with my old buddies the CA Cruisers and ran in Peter's Canyon. I stayed off the big hills but got to run with Julie, Steve, Emile and Catherine.
This week it was 3 and 3 miles again on Tues and Thursday and today I joined the Cruisers again for one loop of the 2 Parks-2 Loops course for a 5 mile long run. I got to run with Julie, Shay, James and his Golden Retriever.

So far, so good. The right heel is pretty much pain free, the left is probably at 85% but holding up well. The residual pain doesn't seem be be aggravated by the mileage so far. A good sign, but them my weekly mileage right now is less than my Saturday long runs used to be. I don't expect to hit 10 mile long runs until sometime in January. Before that I plan on adding in a fourth run each week to boost the mileage first.

It's good to be back!