One down, 17 to go...

I reached my week one goal on day seven on the nose. It feels really good to have a week under my belt, although the runs haven’t been easy. I’m having to remind myself each day to be realistic, but it’s hard to not want to pick up where I left off just a few months ago. I guess it goes to show how important consistency is in running…and while my sporadic runs on the treadmill over the summer may keep me from starting at zero, they certainly haven’t kept my endurance up. So my long run for the week was 4 miles, and my average pace for the week was 9:00 miles. A pretty good pace to start…in fact I’m thinking I may need to slow it down a bit in order to lengthen my runs.

I’ve been running with a Garmin Forerunner. It’s a GPS system you wear on your wrist. It tells you your real-time pace, along with distance and time. It’s a pretty great tool…keeps me honest on exactly how long and how fast each run is. Hopefully it’ll help me to figure out my best pace for adding some distance.

The great news for this week is the forecast has it cooling down so our lows are in the mid-70’s (10 degrees cooler than last week’s lows). It is considerably less painful running in cooler temps, so I’m looking forward to it. I did start out this week with a 3.5 mile run yesterday. That was my first back to back run so far…and probably my hardest. It was humid, hot, and my legs were a bit tired from previous runs and visits to the gym, but I made it. That’s one of the greatest feelings I get from running…when a hard run is over! Ah, I love that feeling!

Week 1 Summary: Goal 15 miles. I completed four outdoor runs for a total of 15 miles. My average pace was 9:00 miles. My fastest pace was my Thursday run at 8:54, and my slowest was also my longest (4 miles), on Sunday at 9:04.

Week 2 Goal: My goal this week is going to be 15 miles again. I’m going to try for a long run of 4.25 miles. I’m hoping the cooler weather may make these runs a little easier so I can add a little distance next week.