Back after a hiatus.

I went running today for the first time since Friday. I was ready to go yesterday, but the weather was particularly crummy. Overcast, wet, and chilly. Not interested. This morning it was still fairly cool, but in a comfortable way.

I decided that instead of altering anything about my running strategy, I was going to continue on with running as far as I could. My problem with this strategy remains the fact that it limits how far I can run afterwards. I suspect that if I ran shorter "do-able" intervals, and didn't run until I was completely spent, I would be able to be running a farther total distance. All that said, today I ran 0.77 miles without stopping today. I was pretty impressed with myself. I looked on mapmyrun to see how far 0.6 miles was on the trails, since that's how far I ran at my parents' house, and decided how far I was going to try to run today. Just like at my parents' house, though, I ran farther than I had planned.

An amazing thing I discovered today (that anyone who knows about running already knows, but which I discovered firsthand today) is that when you focus on your breathing, you can run farther. I prevented myself from gasping for breath for quite a while by just forcing myself to breathe in rhythm with my footsteps (four steps in, four steps out). I would have had to stop much sooner if I hadn't done this, but I just didn't allow myself to do it. A cool experience of mind over matter. I'm a big fan of those.

It took me a while of walking to recover from the 0.77 mile run, and when I started up again, I didn't make it very far. I walked a while further, and finished fairly strong with a 0.21 mile run to the entrance to the park before I walked home. All told today I ran 1.12 miles. I guess I'm selling myself a little short, because I did do more running today than I have before:

Date	Initial Run	Total Run
5-31-11	0.29 miles	?
6-7-11	0.4 miles	1.04 miles
6-10-11	0.6 miles	1 mile
6-15-11	0.77 miles	1.12 miles

I guess I shouldn't be complaining. That's a pretty good improvement rate I think... maybe in a week or so I'll actually be able to run a mile, oh my goodness!

One last note: at the last bit of running I did today, what was slowing me down was not my legs or my breathing. My breathing was slow and even. No, it was my sides! I had killer cramps in both sides in a particular abdominal muscle (no idea which one). It was a little bit frustrating, because my legs felt great and so did my breathing, but it hurt every single time I lifted my legs because of my sides. Hopefully that will solve itself.