Before I started running, I would go walking. One morning, I managed to trip and fall stepping up on a curb and skin my knee to such a degree that there was blood running down my leg as I walked home. I healed up, and thought hey, walking is going so well, maybe I should try running. That was, like a year and a half ago, and I’ve been waiting… waiting… for that moment when I’d finally biff it on a run. I’m surprised it took so long, because I can barely manage to navigate my home without stubbing my toe on something or whacking my hip on any table I even think about walking by. But it finally happened tonight. I tripped over a man hole cover, which, for some reason, are in the middle of sidewalks here. I caught my toe and went into an arm-flailing, slow-mo fall, landing on both hands and knees and my right shoulder, while making a lovely “hhhhhnnnnuuuuunnnnnngggg” sound the entire time. On the side of a main road. During a time of major traffic.
My pants didn’t rip over my knees and it was dark where I was. I couldn’t see or feel any blood pouring out from anywhere, so I figured I was ok and got up and ran home.
Like a boss.
My left arm hurt about halfway up where I’d broken it as a kid, but only for a few minutes, and my knees felt like they were going to bruise, but I kept going, because what other option was there?
When I got home, I pulled my pants over my knees to find a giant bloody patch on one knee and a lightly scraped but swollen spot on my other knee. My palms are slightly skinned, and my right shoulder is seizing up on me every now and then when I reach for something.
Call me crazy, but I have the sense that I’m going to be feeling this in a big way by tomorrow.
But, now that I’ve finally biffed it, I feel like I can relax a little.

My 8 year-old just brought me an ice pack and I told her the story. Her first question was, “DID ANYONE SEE YOU??” She then broke out into repeated reenactments. So, no worries. Laughter heals. I will be fine. :)

I’ve been running pretty consistently. I had sort of decided to focus on getting up to 5K again, but decided I could really do more if I wanted to. So, I did my long route tonight. It wasn’t too rough. I did get passed by another runner while I was out, but whatever, that’s going to happen, whether my ego likes it or not. If I ran in the day time, it would be happening a lot more often!
Every route I have from my house deals with hills whether it’s a “hill day” or not, so I think I’m going to alternate fartlek runs and the longer route. See if I can improve my time at least by a little bit.

I ran.

My last run was 3 weeks ago, thanks to holidays and travel. Normally, I would go back to a walk/run cycle of some sort and work my way back up to a constant run. However, I am sick of that. I’ve been running (mostly) for a year now, and that feels like something a newbie has to do. I am chubby and slow, but I am not new.

So, my run tonight was 20 minutes non-stop. I took it a little slower than usual, but I finished it with no problems and even had a little gas left in the tank.

I was going to be all good and on top of things and maintain my running schedule through the holiday season.

Yeah, that’s not happening.

In the meantime, lower back and hip pain has become a persistent problem over the last few weeks. I thought that perhaps I had a strained muscled, but after some consultation with Dr. Google, long story short, I think it’s really muscle tightness due to the amount of sitting I do in my day. I found this site that has some stretches on it for just such an issue. I did them last night before bed and everything felt so much better. Then, this morning, I woke up and could not move. I got in gear eventually, but clearly one night of stretching is not going to be enough to solve this issue. I’m going to aim for morning and night and maybe a few times in the day and see if it works itself out.

Finishing off a second cold in 3 weeks. Part of my run included some very unattractive lung-clearing sounds. Sorry, neighbors! Ran for 23 minutes straight, 35 total time.

I ran tonight. After about 72 seconds, I realized I really didn’t want to be doing it. My legs felt heavy, and I was feeling very unenthusiastic about the whole thing. I considered just going around one block, and then decided that going out for 5 minutes of run time was SUPER pointless. So I talked myself into doing the next two, which would have put me at about 10 minutes. In the meantime, I realized I just didn’t want to do all the hills at the end of my route. So, I shifted my route and ran around a flat block in my neighborhood twice.  Bam, 20 minutes. Ran back to the house and up our hill and I got to 22, which is what I was planning on when I left the house.
Take that, lackadaisical attitude!

I’m back to 20 minutes nonstop as of tonight. Oddly enough, I blame laziness. I was planning on running two tens, but at the end of my first ten, I was at the top of a hill. So, I figured I’d keep running, since it was downhill. I could walk when I got to the uphill and then finish my time on a downhill. But then when I got to to the uphill, I realized if I stopped running, I wouldn’t want to start again, so I just kept going. See? I was too lazy to take a break. :)

We had rain. Then my daughter was sick. Then I was sick. Then it was Thanksgiving. Then it was a busy weekend. But finally, after 20 days of no running, I ran on Monday night. And I ran again tonight.

I don’t like having to work back into things. Especially since I’d just gotten back to running 30 minutes nonstop before all of the above happened. But, I will say that my first run back is always amazing. Tonight, not so much. But Monday was great.

I did 4 5-minute runs with 3/2/1 minute breaks between on Monday. Tonight I did 3 7-minute runs with 3/2 minute breaks between. I’m going to try to fit in some aerobics tomorrow night, because the St. James Bazaar starts on Friday, and yes, I will be there, and yes, I plan to shop until I get heat stroke and keel over. So running will not be in the cards on Friday.