Potentially, my first mile.

Tragically my current methods of tracking my distance are rudimentary and inaccurate at best. My pedometer may or may not be wildly inaccurate, and the only gauge I have for how far I run is to assume that I always run at the same pace that I ran down the rugby field that day. All that said, however...

Today, I left my house at 6:24. I started walking towards the park in a mid-foot strike walking style, which has become my walking method of choice. There is debate among barefoot enthusiasts about the "correct" way to walk, but I prefer that way because to me the same principles should apply for walking... minimal impact feels better. In any case, I quickly switched to a heel strike walking style because my calves were already a little sore from walking two miles today. I was a little worried that maybe I'd be overdoing it by running (that of course remains to be seen) but I decided to see how it went.

First bit of progress: I ran all the way from the entry of the park to the end of the paved road. When I got home I realized that this is only about 1/3 of a mile (also an inaccurate measure using mapmyrun... can't exactly see the road through the trees), so not quite as impressive as I first thought, but this is good news because it means that the next time I go I can try to run farther on the first go and just add distance each time. Progress!

I ended up walk/running the same exact path that J and I went on the last time we were out, which my potentially inaccurate pedometer measured as being about two miles (including the walk to and from the house). Either way, I used my watch to time the amount of time that I ran while I was out. I logged a total of 7:22.71 of running time. Assuming that I ran at the same pace that I ran down the rugby field (which of course is a poor assumption... I tried to run at a leisurely pace on the rugby field, but today I got tired, I ran up and down hills, and I'm sure I was not at all running a consistent speed) then this works out to be...

... a total of 1.09 miles. Even assuming that this measure is too generous, I think it's safe to say that I ran pretty close to my first full mile today. I got back to the house exactly thirty minutes later, so if I did actually walk/run for two miles, that's about a fifteen minute mile. Slow, but not bad for someone who has never run before I would say! Progress!

When I got back to the house, it was the first time since the damaging run I did two days in to this experiment that my legs actually were sore. Whether this is damaging sore or good sore remains to be seen. I am mildly concerned that I overdid it with my foot, but I have been elevating and icing it for almost two hours now (and the icepack is not really all that cold anymore...) so hopefully it will be okay. We will know tomorrow for sure... but I feel so proud of myself that all I can think about is PROGRESS!