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.
It’s great to see that you continue to run despite your injuries! Hope you the pain doesn’t return. Good luck on your running goals! I’m not really a fan of running but I join a fun run every year. 🙂 Yoga is more of my thing.