Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"Are you still running?"




Leave it to my son to point out the obvious: visiting with him at the wine store last weekend, he looked at me and said "you're not in the shape you've been in". Darn! I thought I was the only one in on my secret. The bitter cold, a calf injury, travel, a funeral, and a lingering head cold have all left me "off track", and out of shape. My too infrequent runs with my morning running partner also revealed that she was on to me over a month ago. How this all happened is easy to explain with all the excuses I just listed. Turning it around is hard, in that one has to resist the urge to catch up on your mileage too quickly and end up injured, and set realistic goals that will show steady progress and are attainable.
The other part of this is that I wonder why I resisted the fact of my current state of fitness and needed an external observation to drive me to action? Aside from my son's direct statement, I realized that we get a lot of external input that is easy to ignore. When I stopped running after my Achilles tendon surgery, people would not say "you've put on some weight", but would ask "are you still running?"
Yesterday, with my son's voice still resonating in my head, I drew up a schedule for the next two weeks. "3 miles easy", were frequent entries with some "long" 6 miles on the weekend. This week's total is 21 miles and I go up to 23 next week. Yesterday, after work, I got my gear together and headed out for my run. Around the circle, down the hill, and along the lake to the park and back. It was slow, but felt good, and I set aside some dry clean clothes for today's run. Today, at work, someone asked me whether I was still running? "Yes" I answered, "I'm getting in shape!"