Week Five, Thursday - the Horse

I haven't run since last week sometime. I still think about it constantly, how to do it better, economize movement, have less pain. But visiting the nutritionist, only to find that I'm not making any progress, threw me for more of a loop than I expected. Half consciously, I decided to take a moment, give up for a second, regroup. It's been more than a week though and the vacation was both undeserved and too long.

It's spring finally, fully and completely cool, green, spring, so I took my run outside. I haven't run outside for the sake of running in almost four years, when I became intimately acquainted with shin splints and the demoralizing Dutch Doctor. It was beautiful today, all cool breezes and sunshine. Last night I left my car about two miles away, so I had a concrete destination and distance. I wore my heart rate monitor so I'd have something to judge my progress by besides soreness, tiredness or time. I'm glad I did since my heart rate went up and stayed up much higher than it does at a slightly faster pace on the treadmill.

I warmed up at a quick pace for about 7 minutes followed by a 5 minute run. It actually wasn't as bad as I expected and my shins didn't hurt - though I felt like I was going slower than molasses. I'm used to the in place motion of the treadmill and had to work much harder than I thought to propel myself forward. The reality of street running is stoplights and found I had to stop for a red light right at the 5 minute mark. After that I walked two minutes and then started to run again, but this time, I was going uphill and I felt my shins and outer edges of my feet being to complain. After that, I only did one more five minutes stint, walking the rest of the time but keeping my heart rate above 160 which was my goal at any rate.

I guess the bottom line is that I'm just too heavy to run outside yet without being really careful of the terrain and my legs. I don't want to end up in a situation where I can't run at all. A track doesn't seen nearly as appealing, despite the across the street proximity of a high school, but it might be worth a try to break things up a bit and get used to outside running. My longer runs will probably have to be inside for the time being though.

At this rate, the end of April is going to come and I'm not going to be able to make a two mile run like I thought. Time to reapply myself.

22 minute outside run, heart rate 160 av., 2 miles.