Turns out I wasn't very good at running in October...and it also turns out October was ridiculously busy at work. That means I probably should have taken the time to run far more often than I did to keep myself (and my family) sane. But I didn't. I'm also excusing myself because my left knee wasn't feeling all that great after the Portland Half and I didn't want to injure it further.
November was much, much better! I saw my neighbor out running a few times and finally on my way home from an afternoon run, I asked her if she would be interested in running with me a few mornings a week. She was nervous, stated she's not a very fast runner, and doesn't run very far, and didn't want to hold me back. I let her that I am not fast, am willing to walk when needed, and assured her that she would not slow me down.
That was a Wednesday and we agreed to meet up that Friday for our first run together. Lynn and I met up that first morning at 6am knowing very little about each other. We now meet up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for about 3 miles. Lynn started out being able to do about 1/2 mile of running with 1/4 mile walking for about 30 minutes and just last week she was able to do 1.5 miles running, 1/4 mile walking, and finished off the morning with another 1.25 running! Progress! It is SO GREAT to have someone waiting for me 3 days a week to run. I've also found when I run with Lynn I am much more consistent with my time even though I don't check my Garmin like crazy when we're running together. I got new shoes which helped an immense amount with my knee and hamstring pain I had been feeling during most runs.
Finally, on to marathon training. Jamie and I are signed up to run The Phoenix Marathon on 3/2/13 and I'm finally feeling like I'm training for it. Turns out the first day I met up with Lynn lined up perfectly with one of Hal Higdon's programs for starting my training and I've been surprisingly good at keeping to the program, even with inclement weather. I ran 9 miles on Thanksgiving (talk about earning my stuffing) and this weekend I completed 10 on the dread-mill due to the rain yesterday morning. When I say I finally feel like I'm training it's mainly because I don't have many recovery days between long runs. I'm used to half-marathon training which allows me to run 10 miles and take a few days off before running anything similar until the race. Two weekends from now I'll run subsequent long runs each weekend of 12, 13.1, and 10 miles to finish up all of my long runs of 2012 and in between those long runs I still have to keep up my weekday mileage of 12 to 14 miles. The interesting thing is that I won't run anything this month longer than I what I have already run during any 2012. January will be different...very different...
All that being said, it looks like I'm on track to run my goal of 500 miles this year, perhaps as much as 35 miles over my goal! Yippee!
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