Thursday, October 22, 2009

Shuffle on down the road

My running style feels a bit like an octogenarian zombie on a high gravity planet trying to get the last brain on the planet... dedicated, but slow, shambling, and shuffling with a slight air of desperation. It doesn't really feel all that gazelle like truth be told.

Now, I know I'm able to run longer now that I could when I started running a bit over 4 weeks ago but that doesn't mean that I'm any more graceful. In fact as I keep increasing my time and distance I feel like as soon as I get OK at it I keep moving the bar to keep me at maximum shuffle.

I feel like a runner in that my legs are sore, my shins hurt sometimes, and that I keep being outside in tights (under my clothes). So I have a lot of runner symptoms. Last run, not today, today I ran on a treadmill, last run I came up on a couple walking along the same path I was on and I passed them. Now, it's true that I pass people all the time when I walk I passed these people and they stayed passed. Now this isn't a big deal really. The path was turny and they were soon out of sight.

When I passed them they stepped out of the way, we smiled and nodded at each other and we both went on our way. I'm lucky. I live in a friendly town. The point is -- they didn't know I'd only started running and they thought, as I passed them, and rounded the bend and vanished into the darkening night, they thought I was a runner. So for them, and for me, for right then, I was a runner. It was really helpful that this was early on in the run and I wasn't gasping for breath like a fish on a dock yet. Otherwise they'd have surely dialed 911 to get me some help. Again... it's a friendly town. They'd have hated to see me die right there on the nature trail.

Tonight I ran on the dreadmill and did OK with it. It wasn't as hard on my shins as last time. I'll know tomorrow how good it was overall. I ran the 10 minute pace for the runs, when it started getting hinky on my shins I would turn the speed UP instead of down like I did the last time I got achy. I found on my trail runs that I run faster than my pace run of 10minute miles when I'm just running by myself. It seemed to help. Another thing that may have helped is I did some of the stretches from active.com's just say no to shin splints post after I ran.

I found out my brother-in-law is running the Marine marathon this year and that impresses me. This is the brother-in-law married to the sister that got me into C25k so there's some running going on in that house. Evidently he's even run another marathon and I didn't know this! I gotta stay in touch better obviously!

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