Day 10.248: Spring/summer running update

In January I found myself having not been out for a run (at all) in 9 weeks. Considering since I took up running five and a half years earlier I hadn't gone more than about 9 days (and that only once or twice), this was quite a serious situation.

The thought that if I stopped running I would get lazy and never start again had haunted me for most of those five years and as it turned out it was really easy to do just that. I got in the habit of staying up later, filling my time with good things like making music and reading books and watching TV with Exile #2, but at some point I realised that I needed to be exercising again.

Getting back into regular running habits was hard - much harder than getting into them in the first place. The fact that I had put on 20 pounds and lost a lot of fitness did not make getting back on the road easy - nor did the fact that it was winter in Maine. It was April before I started to string some decent miles together and feel like a runner again. The table shows my weekly mileage totals since then - hardly a picture of consistency. The final blip was somewhat planned - for our camping trip - but the other orange weeks indicate I did less than I planned.

Finally, I've put a few consistent weeks together - nowhere near enough for long enough to be trained for my marathon on October 1st, but unless I get sick or injured I will run it - and it will be another step towards fully back to what had become normal running fitness.