I'm BACK. I feel like I start most of my blog posts with some sort of statement like that. I'm not very good at this whole thing. I'm back for real this time though because I've got the itch again.
About 2 months ago, I lost the running bug. In a big way. I just hated it. I decided not to do my marathon in early August for a few reasons. First and foremost, running just was not fun. It became I chore, and I felt like I was only getting worse at it. If I woke up in the morning and had a run on my schedule, I dreaded the thought of going outside and doing it. I was just mentally negative about the whole activity. In addition, I was getting a weird pain in the back of my right knee (more on that later). So I just decided to ask myself
If it's not fun...why do it??
So I didn't :)
In fact, I pretty much stopped running completely by late August. One problem however, was that I did still have Reach the Beach on my calendar for mid September. I was very nervous for this race. My 3 legs covered over 18 miles in 18 hours, which was far more miles than I've ever put in in that period of that. But I sucked it up, and ended up loving that race. Like I always do.
I did decide to continue my running break for a while though. After Reach the Beach was done, a pretty weird thing happened to my running schedule...I had no major races planned. And to this very moment I still don't. This is the first time since January 2011 that I haven't had a half marathon on my calendar, and it feels very liberating. I can go to the gym on my own terms, and I don't feel the painful guilt that I used to get when I didnt go every single day.
That being said, I am starting to get the itch again. With more crossfit and short, high-intensity track workouts under my belt under the past month, I feel stronger. I want to start slowly bringing running back into my life.
I told this to Bill this morning, and he had some great advice. Don't register for anything yet. I have a very bad and impulsive habit of signing up for races the second they get in my head, without starting any training. This has been my consistent recipe for disaster. Instead, I'm going to start slow. I'm going to set small goals for myself week to week until I feel that I'm ready for a race again.
That being said, my goal for this week will be to run TEN miles. Not a ten mile run, but 10 miles total. This should be totally doable, so I'm excited to take it on.
We'll see how it goes!
