Day 1 Know Yourself

So I am 6 feet and 0 inches tall, I currently weigh 192 lbs, I have run 4 marathons, and my fastest 5k is 16:53. Of course these running achievements were when I weighed about 180 lbs. So I need to get back in shape and by the time April rolls around I hope to weigh about 180 lbs.

My first day back in the saddle on Monday was a long day. After getting three hours of sleep Sunday night I headed into work at 8:00 am and found myself working a long day, getting home at 7:00 pm. I walked in the door and was out the door running by 7:15, not even giving myself a chance to think it over. And think it over is what I usually do after a long day. Generally I get home and say that I am going to go for a run, but lately with the longer work days, it just has not been happening. I believe this is because I will have every intention of running, but when I get home I may be hungry or tired, so I say I will eat first or put my feet up for a little while before I go running. I have even had my running shoes on ready to go out the door and decide to wait and rest my legs first. Well after I have let myself mull it over for a while I decide that I need the rest for work. So after all this I usually just end up taking it easy at night and not running, saying maybe I will get up early and run at 5:00 am like I used to, oh no that never happens anymore, I love my snooze button too much now. Monday was different because I am focusing on overcoming my shortfalls and I also have a goal that I intend on keeping.

This first run I took was an easy run at about 8:30 mile pace and I went for 40 minutes. I need to do two things before I really get back at it; I need to get in good enough shape where I wont get hurt if I push myself and I need to build a base (a large one). I am worried about injuring myself in anyway, an injury of any kind at this point would cause me to have to start from scratch all over again. I also know that I need to run a lot of longer runs to build up a base before trying any medium or hard workouts. I knew that I could still run 5 to 6 miles at an easy pace so I thought that would be a good starting point. Over the next couple of weeks I will vary my distances, not really breaking 6 miles so that I can allow my legs to get back into the swing of things. After that I will starting building my pyramid.

The main thing is to know what your goal is, knowing yourself, your current abilities, and assessing what you need to accomplish each day. Over the next couple of weeks I will develop a training schedule on a calender for future more intense training so that I can see my goals each day, I have never made a schedule like this before, but I think it might help me stay more focused than usual.