Gearing Up Again

Rickshaw · Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:16 pm

There's nothing like the first posting in a year and a half to get things going again! After another long period away from running, I'm back to a bit of regular weekly mileage, and planning for my first race in ages. Sunday I'll lace up my racing shoes once more for the Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon in San Jose.

A number of things have conspired to nudge me away from long-distance running, most of all my own laziness. But there was also the birth of a new baby, a new job, other hobbies, and frustration at seeming to plateau that made running seem like more of a chore, and less of an enjoyment. I found the long weekend runs especially daunting, as 15-20 miles plus a cooldown would kill half a day that I'd rather spend on something else. For a while I kept up regular running while eliminating the long distance, but after a 5K race last fall, I pretty much stopped running entirely.

But that was then, this is now, and I'm slowly coming back. The sobering thing is that just because I was once able to run "easy" 8:00 miles, doesn't mean I can automatically do it again. After a sedentary year, I found even a 9:00 mile to be pretty challenging. With a couple months of 20-ish mile weeks under my belt now, I'm starting to get a little closer to my old times, but I'm still probably about a minute per mile slower than I used to be. That's a gaping huge hole to close.

I'm running the San Jose Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon this Sunday. I listed my planned finish time as 1:44. I'm not sure if that's optimistic or pessimistic. I've run halves as fast as 1:32 in years past, but 1:44 still looks like something of a stretch this time around. We'll see. There were 13,000 runners last year, with a band playing every mile or so, and total gridlock on the streets of San Jose, so I'm sure it'll be quite a zoo.