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Wednesday, July 01, 2026
A DECENT START ON A HOT HUMID MORNING...
4 Mile Run at Washington Park
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
It feels like the Universe has been consiring to keep me from running, most recently in the form of a local repair shop that won't have time to work on my car until next Monday. Now theoretically I could just step out my front door and run... but I've been doing so little running for the past months that the concrete sidewalks would beat the heck out of my knees, and I really don't want to risk running in the road. So I came up with three options within walking distance: Washington Park, the Hackett Multi-Use Path next to the school, and Buckingham Pond, with the idea being to walk there as a warm-up, run 3 miles or so, and then walk home.
The weather this week threw in an extra complication - it's supposed to be extremely hot and humid. So that means running either 1st thing in the morning or late in the evening.
This morning I managed to get up and get moving in time to head to Washington Park, the closest option. I walked the 0.6 miles there at a brisk pace and then ran laps around the lake in both directions, on both the dirt path and the paved roads. The good news is my body does remember how to run, albeit very slowly. But I've got a lot of work to do to build my strength and endurance back up. My plan was to do 4 loops for about 5k of running - it was warm and unpleasant enough that I almost cut that short, but then a shady stretch with a cool breeze revived me enough to complete the 4th time around, after which I walked home and was pretty useless until mid-afternoon.
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD...
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
The past couple of years I've been finding it very difficult to maintain my mileage.
Some data from the past 5 years:
During the worst of the covid years, I kicked things into a higher gear... and then for a variety of reasons my mileage dropped off, and I lost a lot of the gains I'd made from my previous extended training.
Here's what things have looked like so far this year:
Previously I'd averaged about 5 miles a day on foot during the school year, more in the summer. The first four months of this year I wasn't anywhere near that. What changed things was the Utica Road Runners Five After Five Challenge in May, where participants try to cover 5k or 5 miles a day for 15 days (there are also options for total distance over the 15 days, as well as a really crazy option or two.)
I've done both the 5k and 5 mile a day options previously, and decided to use the challenge this year to start getting my mileage back on track. Clearly some part of that worked, though most of it was additional walking - I still didn't manage to run much.
The challenge this summer is going to be to increase my mileage even more and especially to increase my running mileage. Along the way I also need to start losing some of the weight I gained as my activity level dropped... one afternoon I was hauling a 40 lb bag of bird seed up my front steps and it occured to me that I was hauling the equivalent of that bag around with me every day (!) and that has to change. I also want to get back into the habit of doing yoga workouts on a much more regular basis.
I didn't get out of shape overnight, so getting back into shape is going to take a lot of patience (I tend to be better at being frustrated and/or depressed about where I've allowed mysef to go rather than patient, so that's going to take work!)
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