Open doors

In my last blog post, I talked about the joys of taking a break.  But now it's been a full two months of not training for anything and not running every day.  That includes five weeks of running 20 miles or less per week, and I'm starting to get restless.  I think there are a few key reasons for this restlessness.

One: Although I have enjoyed getting to do other activities, like yoga and the gym, they are harder to fit in the schedule than running.  If I find an extra hour in my day, I can much more easily shove my feet into sneakers and go for a run than look up the yoga class schedule and get myself there, or schedule a session at the gym and drive there.  So the last couple weeks I haven't made yoga happen, although I have stuck to my gym routine.  But on the whole, I'm doing less activity now than when I was running more consistently.  Which leads me to #2 . . .

Two: I can feel the "freshman (-year-of-marriage) fifteen" creeping up, yet I refuse to sacrifice our marital commitment to Ben & Jerry's pint night (which is every Sunday at our house).  So I feel the need to raise my activity level to balance out my Half Baked consumption.

Sweet, sweet Half Baked.  I never knew it was possible to eat an entire pint by myself, until I met Joe.  Bad Joe.

Three: It's kind of a stressful time now, with transitions.  Last week I defended my dissertation.  This week I'm putting the final touches on formatting and submitting it to the world (via ProQuest).  I submitted a letter of resignation to my beloved employer today, and accepted a position elsewhere, which I'm incredibly nervous about.  I feel like committing to a training plan might give me some direction and a bit of stress release at this time.

I had never put a min. or max. on how long my rest break from running would be.  I figured I would just know when I was ready to fully commit again.  I hoped that I'd start to itch for running every day, and that would be my sign.  I think I'm there now. . . . but if I start again and realize otherwise, I give myself permission to change my mind -- especially since the rest of adult life is decidedly anti-mind-changing, which makes things difficult.  (Did I mention my stress over leaving my job??)

In sketching out my training plan for the rest of the month, I decided to start small.  Like, really small.  I haven't been the same runner who could run a 50k on any given weekend, no problem, for a long time -- like September of last year.  I figure it'll take a while to get back there.  I haven't chosen a goal race or anything; I just plan to regain consistency and see how it feels.  

Here's my goal for this week:

Monday    Tuesday    Wednesday    Thursday    Friday    Saturday    Sunday     Week

4                5                4                    4                3             3*               3*             26

*We'll be traveling to Rhode Island to stay with Joe's aunt; he'll be running the Boston Marathon!

And the rest of the month's weekly totals:

April 16-22: 30 miles

April 23-29: 30 miles

I'll see how it goes and adjust accordingly.  So far, 4 miles done today on trails made me very happy.  I'm actually already looking forward to tomorrow's run, especially since it's become my weekly trail run with Joe.   And because it's always followed by socializing at Freetail Brewery.  Yeah, that might have something to do with it.