Pine Banks Park

I woke up this morning to J saying, "I want to go for a run." I was a little surprised, but he seemed pretty adamant about it. I gave him some encouraging words and warned him not to run too hard or too far since that was the mistake I made. Then, I blurted out "I'll go with you!" It was his turn to be surprised. I had done some fast introspection. Yesterday was pain free, and the day before that I ran briefly, twice, and didn't suffer any lasting consequences. I didn't know how much he planned on running, but I figured that if I couldn't keep up, I would just stop. I thought he wanted a quick jaunt around the block, but he had other plans.

An old picture of the entrance to our park

Right down the street from our apartment is a park that we have seen hundreds of times as we drove past it. Neither of us had ever entered the park before, and didn't know exactly what to expect, but J said that that was where he wanted to walk and run. I immediately liked the idea because the five minute walk to and from the park meant that there was built-in warm up and cool down in the exercise.

It was lightly drizzling when we set out, both wearing our VFFs, and I stepped in some mud while trying to avoid a puddle. It was a lose lose... the mud got my feet wet and it felt like I wasn't even wearing anything to protect my feet.

We made it to the park and we were pleasantly surprised to find that a paved road went through it. There were plenty of trails to explore some other time when the ground isn't so wet and my legs and feet are stronger, but today we stuck to the road. I'm not entirely sure what the distance of the whole thing was, but we walked to the end of the road and back and did three short spurts of running. The nice thing about the road also was that it wasn't entirely flat so there was some inclines and declines to be dealing with, and there were markers for us to say "Let's run to that." Each time we ran, I finished with a sprint, and then we continued walking. It was really nice to be outside running and walking through the trees, rather than running on a sidewalk, so I'm glad J had the idea.

According to MapMyRUN, the park is about a quarter mile away from our house, and the walking path itself is a little less than a half mile. The map says that our total mileage today was 1.36 mi. Knowing that, I'd like to increase the distance just a little so that we will be doing something closer to 2 mi, but it was a really great start.

After we got back, J and I both downed a glass of water and I immediately pre-emptively iced my foot and ankle. My foot did not hurt at all, which was reassuring, but the muscles in my calf that had been sore since the last time I ran were giving me a dull ache. It wasn't very painful, it just was a reminder of "Hey, I'm here, don't forget about me and over do it." All in all though, several hours later, I've been able to walk around the house and go about my day without too much discomfort at all, so I am very pleased. Looking forward to our next jaunt, whenever that may be!