One Year

Holy cannoli, this blog is almost one year old. That is twelve months of running or thinking I should be running, twelve months of running magazines, and almost 365 days of asking myself why I'm doing this.

But that's not why I'm posting. I did four kilometers today, down a path that I'm pretty familiar with. I didn't have music with me, but I found myself thinking nonsense thoughts anyhow - from singing along to weird tunes to pondering if I was passing a friend's house or not to... well, whatever happened to cross my mind. While I like being accompanied by music on my runs, it's not necessary.

The clothing was easy: skin layer, warm layer, insulating layer on top, my warm running pants on bottom. However, if it had been any colder than -5C, I would have needed an extra layer. That's what I get for missing the descent-into-winter runs.

The first ten minutes of the run, my calves were tight and a bit painful, but after the first walk, they loosened up. I made it past my apartment and found I was at 2.75km, and still wanted to try for four, so I soldiered on. My knees started to ache a bit around the 3.75km mark, and with 100 meters to go, my Garmin told me to walk, so the last 100 were spent cooling down.

When I got in, I knew I would need some stretching, and boy, did I! It's so easy to lose elasticity in the muscles, but oh, stretching out my hamstrings felt good. Women's Running magazine had an article on quick post-run yoga, and going through the poses, while not a cake-walk, were not too challenging. I like that there had been thought put into the flow of moves, and how one position could transition into the other. For a post-race yoga work-out, I think I'll keep this one up.

I'm glad I did my run outside tonight. It re-established for me the fun of running out-doors. And to think, this time last year, I didn't know if I would even enjoy myself, and now, I'm jumping back into running 10-and-1s, though slower and fewer than when I stopped running in October, but I think I'll be good to start running in my up-coming clinic, and eventually, the Ottawa Race Weekend half-marathon.