It has been a long time since I have written about running.  I ran on and off–mostly off–as I worked my way through a string of injuries lasting at least two years.  Every time I thought I was healed, I would go out and hurt myself again.  This time last year, I was in physical therapy for lingering plantar fasciitis.  If you have ever had that, you’ll know it never really goes away.  The PT, plus finally getting a great pair of custom orthotics in June, helped me to be able to walk without pain for the first time in maybe a year.

I was able to start running a little bit in March of 2015 and was able to have a long, slow build-up to running several times a week and up to 20 miles per week by the end of the year.  I haven’t had plantar fascia pain during a run since July.  I’m not saying I’m perfectly healed because I probably never will be, but my quality of life has greatly improved and, as a bonus, I feel like a runner again and am enjoying it more than ever!

I used to keep a running log and started a new one when I started running semi-consistently in March.  Here are some stats from my 2015 running log.

• In 2015, I ran 392 miles.  I started keeping the log on March 13th.
• My highest-mileage month was September with 68.17 miles and my lowest was April with 13.49 miles.
• My first time running at least ten miles in who knows how long was the week of July 27th, when I ran 11.22 miles.
• My most international runs were July 18th and July 20th, when I ran on a treadmill in the hotel basement gym in Jerusalem.  July 18th was also my longest run of the year up until that point at 5 miles.
• The most mileage I ran in a week was 20.8 miles the week of November 9th.
• I ran just one race, a Firecracker 5k.  My time was 29:42 and I was just happy to finish faster than 31 minutes.

Since returning to running this year, I have seen my easy pace go from 10:45 (though I also ran a lot of untimed runs in the beginning) to 9:45 on a good day or 10:15 on a bad day.  Slower if it’s snowy, but time on a snowy run means absolutely nothing.  I’m happy to see that consistency, even if the mileage is low, is leading to improvement.

My running goals for 2016 are as follows:

• I want to run a half marathon in the spring.  I’m looking at the Martian Half Marathon if I’m in town that weekend.  Sub-goals here: follow the Hal Higdon Novice 2 training plan and finish the race healthy.  Martian is 12 weeks out, so I started week one of the plan this week.
• I would like to run another half marathon in the fall with my realistic goal being to run faster than my spring half and my stretch goal being to run sub-2 hours.  My PR in the half marathon is 1:57:11, which I ran in my very first half in 2013.  The next two were 2:05ish and 2:20ish as my string of injuries lengthened.  I want to add speed work into the training cycle, once per week.
• I’d like to run a few 5ks over the summer, just for fun.

Above all, I want to continue to enjoy running.  I’ll take breaks when I want and I am putting no pressure on myself to finish these goals if I get burned out or decide that I don’t want to run anymore.  The point of these goals is purely for fun to see where I can go with running in 2016.