Starting over

It's been a while, eh? Five months. Five months ago, complaining about only finishing 14 of my 20 mile long run. What's happened since then? Well, I decided I didn't want to run Grandma's. The week after my terrible long run, I was made a supervisor at work. Running never stands up well to my life changes. Becoming a supervisor didn't equate to that many more hours of work each week, but the stress of extra meetings and being responsible for more than just myself added up pretty quickly. Keeping a consistent running schedule would have helped with that, but alas, I let it fall by the wayside.

Since my "failed" long run of 14 miles in May, I've averaged *gulp* 7 miles per week. I joined an ultimate frisbee team this summer, and that was tons of fun. Sprinting around during frisbee games actually kept me in pretty good shape. The two or three additional runs I did per week felt okay, and my pace didn't suffer from my lack of mileage.

In August, frisbee ended, and so did my fitness. Three miles is doable, but my easy, I-can-breathe pace is now a miserable 10:40+/mile. I did a marathon at 10:38 pace! What is this crap?!

As you can imagine, my newly discovered lack of endurance and speed is hard to accept. Anything under 7 miles used to be a short run, and now I'm elated when I do more than 3. Sometimes I don't even make it that far. I've done 19 miles at a faster pace than my easy 2.6 mile run the other day. Woe is me!

All that being said, I've learned an important lesson. The saying "Use it or lose it" is true. And although I'm complaining about how far I've fallen, the fact is that I can still do a 5 mile run, albeit slowly. Better to step in now and accept my shortcomings, rather than deny there's a problem and let the 3 mile run wither into a 1 mile walk. And the flip side to all this is that I can regain what I've lost. I'm not injured, just lazy. As long as I'm consistent and smart about training, I can reclaim and even surpass what I once had.