Real David H.

I was almost at a point in which I was going to have to take a “starting over” approach with running. But tonight I prevented that. Instead of starting over, I can comfortably say “I’m back.”

I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I hit the treadmill tonight with anticipation. I went away having the best run in a long time. One thing I plan to use the treadmill for is speed work, so tonight I did several quarter-mile intervals as part of a 5-mile run. After a warm up, I did two quarters at an 8-minute mile pace (with quarter-mile breaks at a 9:13 pace) and then two quarters at a 7:30 pace. Then after a half mile at a 9:13 pace, I mixed it up so much that I lost track of what I did exactly. That’s one drawback of not having a Garmin to help me out on a treadmill, but at the same time it’s nice to end a workout trying to figure out what I just did.

Hitting the 5-mile mark is a great milestone as well. It’s my longest run since the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half, easily beating out 4.1 miles on Oct. 5. I’ve had several runs between 3 and 4 miles, but I’ve had no urge until tonight to even think about 5. It’s nice to do it in the middle of the week too. I get wrapped up into thinking I’m too busy to run much in the week, but I know how much of an excuse that is.

I didn’t join the gym to do much treadmill running, but it was much better tonight than I thought it would be. My goal with the gym is to mix it up a lot, but tonight I just wanted to run. Even though I wasn’t going anywhere, it worked out pretty well.

I’m glad that I didn’t have to work my way back to a workout like this. I’ve said it already, but joining a gym is one of the smartest things I’ve done in some time. Had I not done this, darkness would have been an excuse and I would have ended up only having a walk with my dog as my exercise for the day.