A running reboot

So, when last we left my adventures in running, I had admitted to having gone through a rather poor period in my training.  I had planned on cutting back to 2-3 workouts per week over the summer in concession to the heat.  Instead, I ended up going through a stretch where I only ran 4 times in about 5 weeks.  My plan at that time was to get myself back into a running groove over the end of August, and then start really training again, with the intent to run a race in mid-October.  Suffice to say, that didn’t happen.  The plan started off well.  I had couple good weeks to close August, and then got a solid start in the first week of my training program during the first week of September.   Unfortunately things went dramatically downhill from there.

The following week I went to California with my Mom and Dad, to visit extended family.  The large portion of my trip was going to spent fishing with my Dad and uncle above 10,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  I took my running gear along, but being honest with myself, I knew that I was probably wasn’t going to be completely faithful to my training schedule.   I ended up not running at all.  About the same time, I realized that I had a case of plantar fasciitis in my left foot, and it was becoming more acute.  Under different circumstances, I might have just run through it.  Plantar actually works itself out and becomes less painful while running, so it’s not necessarily a major hindrance to training – it can just make walking and standing the rest of the time rather painful.   However, since I wasn’t in a particularly good place with  my training to begin with, I decided to take some time off to let it heal, as opposed to having to deal with it for months while continuing to train.  That led to another 2 ½ week gap in my training.  Once I got started again, I never got myself back into a training groove.  By mid-October, I had only run 5 times in about a four week span.  I had held off on registering for the October race, so I just let it go, and I was in no shape to run it anyhow.

At this point, I realized I was at a defining moment in my running career.  I either needed to get my act together and get serious about training again, or just forget about racing altogether for a while.  If I didn’t get going soon, I was going to have very limited time for racing before getting back into the summer.   For a variety of reasons, some of which I may share at a later time, I came to the conclusion that the latter was not an option.  So, with that decision made, I re-adjusted my plans again.  I got a friend to hold me accountable to a training plan.   I made plans to run a race in December just for the experience (in other words, I wasn’t going to train for a goal time), in order to give me something that I would need to get in shape for.   At that point, my tentative plan was to follow that up with a race in January that I would fully train for, and then continue with several more races through the spring.

So, come the beginning of November, I was finally back at it.  I began running regularly again, using workouts that were based on the first week of Jeff Galloway training program I was planning to use when I started “officially” training.  At the outset, I backed the workouts down a bit in terms of length and intensity.  I was really out of shape relative to where I had been, and I didn’t want to push too hard, too fast and potentially sustain another injury.  I got through November running 3 times every week, except for one week when I only ran twice due to a significant intervention by life.   As I got toward the end of November, I began thinking that the December race I was planning on wasn’t the best idea.  For one thing, the website for it was really sketchy in terms of information on the course, past results, etc.  Secondly, I was looking at a couple of mid-January options for my next race.  In order to fully train for a mid-January race, I was going to have to start before the December race, meaning I’d have to disrupt my schedule to do it.  So, in consultation with my accountability partner, who was also planning to run it, I made the decision to save my money, skip the race, and focus on training for a mid-January race.

Besides, having the plan of the December race had served its purpose anyhow: I was back in a good training rhythm and ready to go further.   The Monday after Thanksgiving I started on my full training plan.  I had been kicking around a couple of different January races, and eventually settled on running the Saginaw 5k in the York area on January 15^th with a couple of friends.  Training for the race went quite well.   I only missed one workout, and I pretty much was able to make that up on the elliptical that night.   My resolve to stick with the plan was quickly tested.  Those who live in this area know December was unseasonably cold, which meant it was “real” winter running weather well ahead of schedule, but I persevered, with the help of plenty of warm running gear.  I’ve found I actually enjoy running in cold weather, and that it’s much better than running when it’s really warm!   Now, when it’s cold and really windy… that’s another story, but I managed to fight through those couple of nights as well.  Luckily, despite the cold, there hasn’t been much snow yet.  I’ve only run while it was snowing once, and there hasn’t yet been enough snow to make road conditions an issue for any length of time.

So, as things stand today, I have finished up the hard part of the training and am now tapering for the race on Saturday.  The end result of all this is that I feel like I’m going into this race at a level of fitness similar to what I had for my race back in May, perhaps slightly better.  My primary goal is simply to best my PR from that race – 24:27.  However, I ran a terrible race that day due to some key rookie mistakes, so I’m very hopeful that I can take a big chunk off of that time.  My more optimistic goal is to challenge the 23 minute barrier.  Regardless of any of that, I’m very happy to be finally getting back into a race and getting more of that experience under my belt.