Once A Runner…

I Managed A Little Jogging Today

The wind was howling this morning — 30 MPH gusts — so I waited until the afternoon to walk, only the winds didn’t let up. Too bad for me. I went anyway. The wind was brutal and the wind chill was about 37 or 38 degrees. Guess who forgot his gloves, too?

I drove out to Fort Gordon to use the red clay loop around Barnes Field, figuring it would be softer than asphalt for a change. It would’ve been, but recent rains (much appreciated help with our long drought) had parts of the track compacted, other parts muddy, and the wind had torn down two branches from a couple of the already-blooming Bradford Pear trees that border the parade field all around the inside circumference of the track. One of those branches was quite large — it stretched across the whole track!

I set out on a 45-minute walk, but after clearing the headwind on the second turn I picked it up into an easy jog for a short bit three times with walking between. Then I repeated that on the second lap, with a seventh short jog on the first turn of what would’ve been the third lap. I went about 18 minutes over my workout target — I always seem to go longer than I set on the Nike+ iPod workout. At the end, Joan Benoit Samuelson piped up and congratulated me on a new “personal best” for the mile, and I completed the 5K faster this time around than last time I went that far, too. (Yeah, yeah, I know. But it’s progress.)

So, how did the jogging feel? Pretty good, if I get over the fact that I was lumbering along more like a bear coming out of a rudely interrupted hibernation than like the runner I want to be again. I felt really heavy and slow, which is the truth — I am heavy and slow, but just to pick it up and move a little bit faster felt okay. The knees weren’t much trouble at all, either, so I count it as a great leap forward.

I won’t do that again too soon, though. Getting a little too rambunctious too soon could derail what progress I’ve made so far. Tomorrow will be a longer walk because I really like moving around more on the weekends when I don’t have somewhere to be right away. Saturdays and Sundays give me the opportunity to go a little longer, something I want to encourage to become habit since I’ll try to get in a long run on those days in the future. I might as well try to get it set in my head to go long every weekend now as try to change things later.

So, a little jogging and it felt okay enough that I have hope that I can maybe begin the “White Starting Plan” from Daniels’ Running Formula by early April, just as the weather starts to really get nice. I can hardly wait. That program will carry me through most of July. Then I can start the “Red Intermediate Plan,” after which I should be adequately prepared to start getting ready to run the Cowtown 10K with my brother, Darrell.