Of course, "interesting" is a relative term

Ramping up the activity post-injury is interesting. I don't necessarily mean it's interesting in a good way, but it's interesting. It seems to move a lot slower than it does, even though it does move plenty slow, and you count your victories as benchmarks or accomplishments that would have made you scoff at yourself before the injury layoff.

I cataloged the "achievements" of Operation Resume Running, which started nearly a month ago already:

December 13 - Jogged 30 seconds.

December 15 - Jogged 2.5 minutes.

Still in a boot for all but about 3 of my awake hours and dipping my toe very gingerly back into the running pool, the "runs" on 12/13 and 12/15 were very slow at about 16:00/mile pace.

December 18 - Ran 10 minutes, including 5 at 6.0 MPH (10:00/mile).

December 20 - Ran 15 minutes, starting at 5.5 MPH and working up to 6.3 MPH for about 30 seconds at the end.

December 22 - Ran 20 minutes, and for the first time my total walking/running distance totaled more than 3 miles.

While I was running 10, 15, 20 minutes, I was also walking 15-20 minutes as a warm-up. 12/22 was the first time in my recovery that I ran longer than I walked. This meant something to me for some reason, although I'm not sure what or why.

December 24 - Ran 25 minutes, worked my way up from 5.6 MPH to 6.5 MPH.

I didn't get around to keeping track of exactly what I was doing for the next week, but up to this point all my "running" was indoors on a treadmill. My goal was run for 30 minutes outdoors on New Year's Day.

December 26 - Ran 25 minutes.
December 28 - Ran 30 minutes.
December 30 - Ran 30 minutes.

On track to run outdoors on New Year's Day. Also, on December 30, with my foot feeling pretty good, the doctor allowed me to stop wearing the boot completely and to not come back unless I needed him. He also told me to wear a good pair of cross trainers and to not participate in any "repetitive motion activities such as running" for two weeks. Oops.

Anyway:

January 1 - Ran 30 minutes outdoors. Made it about 3.25 miles. Slow, but nice run.

I continued to run every other day because while there was no pain there was some soreness in my foot that I didn't want to push. I took an extra day off this past weekend because I wanted to run a little further outdoors on Sunday than I went the week before.

January 8 - Ran 32:45 outdoors. 3.5 miles.

Too fast first mile, too slow second mile, better third mile, and even better last half mile. Overall still pretty darn slow. But my foot was not at all sore, for the first time.

January 9 - Ran 3 miles indoors. Bonus: ran in Kinvara 2s and still not sore!

And here we are at my latest and greatest milestone, running at least three miles two days in a row. I even ran on the treadmill from 6.2 MPH to the last quarter mile at 7.0 MPH (about 8:34 pace). I used to start at 7.3 MPH and work my way up from there, but at least I touched 7 again.

My first post-injury race is on April 1. The plan is to run the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, and while that's the place where I set my 10 mile PR (twice) which I'm sure I won't come close to this year, training for it should commence soon. Like in a week and a half or so at the 10 weeks until race day mark. And I'm positioning myself nicely for it by both getting my body conditioned for running and for building up a nice little mileage base from which to launch a 10 mile training program.

It's not just coincidental it's all working out that way. It's interesting!


Kitty knows what's interesting...