Dos Millas Mas

Two more miles! It's such a short distance, but it's been over a month since I ran that far. It's an important physical milestone, but an even bigger mental one. My body felt a bit sluggish compared to where I left off, which is expected.

I've been reading alot online and talking to other runners about coming back from injuries. From all the information I've gathered, coming back from a month off is a big deal. Especially with regards to overdoing it. Supposedly, even a week or two off and one loses significant speed and/or endurance ability. You have to cut your weekly miles down a bunch when coming back. It seems that running is a sport where you need to maintain your abilities consistently...a couple runs per week.

This is an aspect of running that I don't like. It's frustrating that I went skiing, got hip bursitis, took a month to recover, and now I have to essentially start over. The body is a fickle bitch I suppose.

I contrast this to cycling where I basically didn't ride for four months (ok, I rode my MTB twice). My last couple rides in October were 16.5 miles to/from work each way (33 total). Then in February after four months off, I rode 10+ and 15+ miles on consecutive days. And I didn't get exhausted at all. I like that I was able to ride about half my maximum distance from four months ago with only 2 MTB rides in between. It seems that my cycling base stayed with me much longer than my running base, and that's something I can get into!

The good news is that I'm back on track to run the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler five weeks from tomorrow.