So I got more than 5 hours sleep last night. I can say definitively that I prefer to run after having woken up before my alarm went off than after having dragged myself out of bed before the snoozes accumulate to the breaking point. That said, drinking nothing but wine between 8pm and the half a glass of a water I drank right before leaving may not have been an ideal strategy.
In any event, today’s run went pretty well. I left around 9am, having looked out the window and seen that there was a break in the rain. Of course the minute I got out the door it started to drizzle, and worked itself up to proper rain within the first five minutes. Fortunately, my trusty water resistant pants and Houston Oilers cap were up to the challenge of keeping me dry.
Almost immediately I felt a very sharp pain in my right big toe. It was definitely pain, as opposed to soreness, and it almost made me turn back (I have a strong sense of self preservation, and will go to great lengths to avoid injury. Great lengths, like bailing on doing something I already don’t want to do.) I decided to tough it out a bit and focused a bit more on my form, and it disappeared after a few minutes.
On Day 1 I made a conscious decision to keep as slow a pace as possible. Today I decided to push the pace a little bit. That went relatively well at first. Unfortunately I also decided to incorporate some hills into the run this morning. The combination of pace and uphill collided pretty quick, and since the only way to get home eventually was up the hill, the pace settled back to a pretty casual one, though still better than on Day 1.
Running is boring, which is one of the reasons I hate it. I’m lucky enough to live on the edge of a good sized park. Since there was light when I woke up this morning, I decided to take my run onto some of the local trails. I found focusing on not slipping in the mud, tripping over roots or rocks, or being attacked by wild packs of coyotes was a good distraction from the cold hard reality that I was running. Also, the more often I do this, the quicker I will have an incredibly amusing story about the time I fell in the woods during a run.
In terms of pain, the most notable issue was definitely the toe. Other than that, around the fifteen minute mark my right hamstring acted up a bit, and after about twenty minutes my right quad and hip expressed their distaste for my life choices. There were some on and off complaints from my shins and calves too, but nothing too serious. The side stitches felt like they were coming on for most of the last twenty minutes, but never quite hit. We’ll see what happens when my runs involve more running than walking.
Well, that’s it. Day 2 is on the blog. In theory Day 3 is tomorrow. Since I plan on getting stupid drunk tonight for my friend’s birthday, it should prove to be a unique challenge.
ifuckinghaterunning 