A Long Way Back

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Yesterday I went for a run. It was the first run of the season, outside. We are blessed to live in a perfect location for such fun. Our street dead ends at the bike trail, which goes straight to a huge park about a block or so away.

Our 11yo son went with me on his bike and I planned to go about 2 miles. A mile up and a mile back. To be honest, I wasn't especially excited. My running experiences since Cameron was born have all been inside on the treadmill. I'm working my way, slowly, to a goal - so I need to well, work on it! With a couple of training days during the week, I'd like to get back to Sundays being my "long run" days.

Off we go. My brilliant husband found an application that tracks my running location with the built in GPS in my phone. It has a variety of options to track your distance, elevation, and pace with a feature that automatically sends it back to a website for storage and analysis. Very cool. Also free.

I always start out by walking for two minutes, then a slow jog. It was amazing being outside on the trail. Liam was riding by my side for a few minutes and we were chatting and enjoying being together. After a while, I thought - gee, I haven't even looked at my watch yet! I glanced down to check my heart rate - still in the 140's - and noticed I had been running for 15 minutes without taking a walking break!!

After 25 minutes, I could see the bridge that I had in mind for my goal - so I decided to "just make it to there". When we got there, I wasn't tired and was feeling pretty good, so I turned around and ran on. A couple of more "just make it to ______" 's and I had run 3 miles! Man, that felt good.

Analyzing my time and distance, I came to the conclusion that I'm finally back to where I was about 6mo after I had Susan. That also happens to be where my fitness level (and weight) stayed because I got pregnant with Cameron so quickly. It took me 11 months to get here after Cameron, but I'm back baby!!

Time to work hard and get my time down for the Governor's Cup 5k in the fall. That was the very first road race that I ever ran. I would like to beat that first year's time, which was my best. My other goal that goes along with that, is to be 20lbs lighter by then as well. I know I can do it!

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