As I deal with my work-a-holism, I find myself gravitating to running. I hammered my quads about a week and a half ago, and now I've run 9 1/2 miles two days in a row. I'd been doing some squats for a few days prior and my glutes were sore when I went out to run on Monday. That soreness is gone, as is the residual soreness that I was still carrying from the trail run (which I was actually still feeling yesterday). I just feel like I can go out and run 10 miles every day. Of course, my out and back hilly run happens to be 9 1/2 miles, but that's ok, as I don't really want to be a complete slave to a number. In fact, in talking to my coach yesterday, I used to consider running for 90 minutes to be threshold for a "long run." My 9 1/2 mile runs take me 90 minutes. I feel like I can do this every day. That kind of takes the concept of my long run to a new level. I know it may seem silly to be writing all this after just two days, but mentally I know that I'm going to be able to run ten miles a day, day in and day out. That is how far my running fitness has come in the last year.
What's remarkable is that over the last 17 months, I've actually averaged 27 miles a week of running. That includes a significant down period last winter where I was injured for the first time in a long time. What stands out to me from this graph is the consistency that I've developed over the past eight months where I've averaged 31 miles a week with an even greater level of consistency. My coach pointed out that, at the age of 62, this is pretty remarkable. My taper for an Ironman that didn't happen allowed me to recover and then do the 20 mile trail race. But now I'm ready for the next phase of further developing my running fitness. While I continue to train for Ironman, and particularly Ironman St. George in May, in my heart I've become a runner and in the spirit of finding what works for me every day, this is the path I'll be taking for the time being. We'll have to see where this graph goes over the next couple of months!
The most important thing is that I'm not a slave to a number. My daily run seems to have settled in at around 90 minutes, and I'll start adding in a long run in the next week or so. That long run will probably start out to be 2 hours, and I'll gradually increase it over the next few months. I'm also committed to doing walking lunges to start every day. Yesterday, I did five (each leg). Today, I'll do seven. I don't want to overdo these, but they appear to be the most important strength exercise that I can perform on my legs with some degree of specificity for running. My journey continues.
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