Never in the history of my running life have I been laid off so long and so often. Last Saturday I began what I hoped was a return to some semblance of running by doing the 1 minute jog with 1 minute walk intervals. I haven’t tried again since then until Thursday morning and just by sheer coincidence. I was just planning on taking a walk when I heard my downstairs neighbor leave to take her kids to school, so I fired up the treadmill instead, and started a very slow jog on it while reading the newspaper at the same time. A matter of feeding the mind and the body all at once. Since the newspaper covered the console, that gave me an excuse of not peeking too often at the elapsed time. I was hoping that my recently injured right calf could handle at least 15 minutes non-stop. When that time passed, I hoped for 5 more minutes, then another, then another. In the meantime I was monitoring how the calf felt but with the distraction of reading, I managed to keep going until I reached 45 minutes. Erring on the side of caution, I finally stopped even when I felt that I could do more. For a cool down, I took a 45 minute walk to and from the bank to withdraw some money. It’s always good to find a an excuse or reason to propel yourself at your own power when you have a reachable goal. That way you finish an errand and also engage in exercise. If my calf holds up and recovers, on my next run I will have to learn a lot of self control by not going too far or pushing the pace when I am feeling good. For people who hate exercising, self control means finding the motivation to do it. For me, it is the opposite. It is finding the courage to not overdo it. I’m considering keeping my runs on the treadmill for now to lessen the impact on my legs and to be able to keep the pace constant. Please, please, keep me from pressing the UP button!
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