Getting back into it

I'm excited to be getting back into running on a full-time basis. After the marathon, we sort of had to back off from running and let our legs recover. However, as the weeks pass, the distance gets to slowly creep up.

What I'm really hoping for is that on Sunday we can do this really nifty 6.0 mile loop. The thing about the loop that is cool is that we stay right on the shore of Lake Michigan rather than taking the inside part of the lakefront path. And in the fall, if you run along the shore in the afternoon, it is quite spectacular. On an overcast November day, the water is a very cold, grey color and the tide is high so the waves come crashing up in a very dramatic fashion. It is like running in a movie (except that, I suppose, in a movie you would probably be chased by Vikings while you ran or something like that. Luckily there are very few Vikings along the Lakefront path).

Of course, it wasn't so nice the last time we tried to run it. A couple Sundays ago, we tried this loop without pre-measuring it...who knew it was so far? Well, our legs certainly knew the distance and right around the 3.5 mile marker they made their opinion known. It was like hitting a wall and all of a sudden our legs started hurting everywhere. And so we had to walk the last 2.5 miles which, on a normal day, wouldn't be a big deal. However, it was about 45 degrees out and the wind was gusting up over 20 mph. Let's just say this wonderful, movie-set like running loop didn't have the Hollywood ending.

I'm hoping, then, that we really are back to the point where we can start doing some nice, longish runs (without having to trudge back home, shivering in the wind). I understand that taking time to recover is important, but running less than 4 miles every run gets old after awhile. After all, half the fun of running a marathon is getting to reply to the question "what did you do today" with a shrug and a casual "oh, we just ran 10 miles."