4 miles at Liberty Park, 7:56 average. It was quite hot, I should start running earlier. I’ve lost a lot of fitness from my “break” time and I want to start increasing my miles and being more consistent. To start, I’m making it my goal to run every day this week. I know that’s sorta lame and isn’t hard, but I need to get back in the habit of making time for my run rather than running if I find time later in the day or skipping if I don’t feel like it. It’s been a good break to get away from the high intensity training I’m used to but I’d still like to be in decent shape, which I’m really not in right now. I was surprised at how uncomfortable it was, I want to get back to where 6-8 miles feels comfortable then build off of that until 10 miles does.
I want to go with the high miles low intensity approach because I do find it more enjoyable and I did find more success with it in high school. I’m better at long distances anyways, Ashley Hawks told me when I ran with her a few weeks ago that she was always impressed with how well I could pace/how even I could hit splits my freshman year at SUU. I’d forgotten that it was my strong suit and was a little surprised, but she did have a point. In high school I was the girl everyone sat on in races because I could pace well and then they’d kick with 400 left and outkick me. Speed isn’t my strong suit. So taking that into consideration, I want to train for something that I know is my stronger suit. I actually loved running far in high school and not caring about how fast I went. Just running for as many miles as I wanted. My longest run ever was 18 (or 18.5?) miles. I want to be able to do that again.
It’s kind of awesome to be in control of my training and to be able to choose how I run. And especially to run because I want to, not because I have to. I definitely want to run more half marathons and one day I do want to brave a marathon. But not until I’m at high mile weeks. I’m thinking my first real half won’t be until next spring so I can build up a strong base for it, then I’ll go from there. It might get difficult because of classes (I’ll be applying for BYUI’s Physical Therapist Assistant program in the spring and really do need to focus more on school than running to have the best chance of being accepted, and then the program itself is very rigorous) but I’m going to do the best that I can.
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