How Slow Can You Go?

That title is about running.   I started running some time back and I didn't think it was possible to run a 5K, much less anything longer like a half-marathon.    I learned that running wasn't that hard (for me) and adding distance wasn't too terribly difficult.   We trained up for a half-marathon and then did a marathon the next year.

I have never been fast though.   I mostly run at a pitiful plod.   I've tried running faster from time to time but I ran into shin splint problems or IT band problems.   It seemed like every time I tried to work on speed, something in my body put down a it's figurative foot and told me it just wasn't going to happen.

Today I find myself signed up for not one, but two marathons in the next calendar year.   This is totally due to peer pressure because left to my own lazy devices I sure as hell wouldn't have signed up.    The latter one next year is on pavement and I didn't enjoy the half-marathon we ran last year for pavement-based reasons.    My feet dislike pavement.    The one that's in March, however, is on trails or compacted ground.   That fact alone was enough to sway me into saying, "sigh, okay, I'll sign up."   Can you sense my enthusiasm?

I'll have to circle back around to the nerve pain and the Lyrica I'm taking now, but in short, it's helping.  It's helping a lot.   That, and I found out the shoe I like, while great for my feet, wasn't the best for running on roads.   Sure, I had a trail shoe, but the other shoe I was running on wasn't good for roads.   So maybe there's that as a positive too.

So I'm signed up and I suppose I'm going to work on pacing.   Today we did a test run to see if we could make a starting pace.   I run slow; I have no problem running over eleven minute miles.   Today, we tried to get to eleven minute miles.    And we did it.   It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.   My shins didn't hurt and my IT band didn't make a single complaint.  

So it's not how slow can you go any more.   I have no plans to make fast times, but getting a bit faster would be a nice improvement on my running.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said today, "I want to go to jingle bells."  My husband told me, "he means Bojangles."    Later in the day I was talking to my son.   I told him I loved him.   He told me, "I like your heart.  I love all of you."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son and daughter were talking about their two imaginary playmates: Ghi Ghi and Gah Gah.   My son said one was a girl and one was a boy.   My daughter clarified, decisively saying, "Ghi Ghi is a girl and Gah Gah is a boy."

Fitness Update:  Five miles at eleven-minute mile pace.   Slow, I know.   But it's a basis to start from.