Today is a rest day on the schedule - although I took it to mean "rest" from running, and so I altered my morning Qigong routine to include a more vigorous form that I need to practice more, and will be taking a Taiko class this evening that should use up nearly as much energy as a 1 mile run, if not more.
Yesterday I met up with a couple of friends and did a brief run on the Leif Ericksson trail in Forest Park. We were scheduled to run 3 miles, and according the markers along the trail we did, but my GPS said that we tracked 2.74. I think we ran somewhere in between that - and we were moving at a pretty slow pace - tracked at 33 minutes for that distance, which means were moving along at about 12 minutes per mile.
One of the people who joined me to run is a friend from my Marine Corps days (R), and she is training to run a half marathon this upcoming April. She is doing most of her training with Team in Training, and is already up around the 6 mile mark.
It is interesting to track her developing running injuries and mine - we have both been training on hard surfaces - pavement/concrete, and yesterday's run really showed the difference between running on a trail and running on pavement. At about the 1/4 mile marker on the trail it goes from dirt/gravel track to a short stretch of pavement which is about an 1/8 of a mile long. Going out we were out of breath, and working on just finding our rhythm, but coming back we had spent the majority of the run past the 1 mile mark talking and just cruising along. Turned around, running back downhill, and neither of us was really complaining about the injuries we both have started to sustain. Until we hit the pavement, and within about 5 strides we could tell the difference - my hip started to ache, and her knees started to burn - and then we got off of the pavement and the discomfort lessened a little bit.
My other running partner (B) yesterday is in considerably better shape than either of us, and so he took off on his own pace, and ended up basically running circles around us. He has been training in Vibram 5 fingers for the past couple of months. I got a pair a couple years ago, back when they were introduced, and quickly realized that I got my best use out of them on the trail, and not on pavement. Running without any cushioning under your feet is a completely different experience, and unfortunately I think that I am too heavy right now to run sans cushion on road surfaces. Anyway B has been training primarily on a chip track, and yesterday he had to run on mud and stones - again, totally different experience for him, and he probably bruised his feet a little.
I'll probably keep running in the shoes that I just got for a while, until I am comfortable running 3 miles a day, and ideally by that point I will have taken off enough weight, or increased my strength levels, so that I can go back to wearing my VFFs.
The run yesterday was fun - and it highlighted what I have been saying about running by yourself - it is far, far easier to keep going when you have someone keeping track of you - R wanted to stop and walk about a mile in, and I wouldn't let her - we slowed down a hair, and I had her change her stride to take some of the jarring impact off of her knees. Without me there, she would have slowed to a walk, and without her there, I probably would have as well.
I'm about to start reading a couple of books about running - the first being "Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Had Never Seen." We'll see if I gain anything from it.
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