A Good Run

I had a pretty good run today and that was a bit of a surprise. It’s actually always a surprise to me when a run seems to go relatively well, I’m not sure why. I guess because I still feel like I am so new (again) to this and since I’m also carting around more weight than is really ideal for running (for my frame anyway). Additionally, with trying to lose weight by cutting calories while also starting up a running program, I am walking a fine line between cutting enough calories to make a difference on the scale, while also eating enough to fuel my runs. There is a reason why lots of people who train for marathons find that they actually GAIN weight. Their bodies either scream for more calories by making them ravenous, or they feel like they are burning so many calories that they’re entitled to eat a lot more (or some combination of the two). All you have to do is log onto the RunnersWorld.com forums and you can read many laments on the subject. This was not my experience when marathon training, however. I actually lost weight. But I was also running in the mornings and spinning in the evenings in those days, and I am also one of those people who tend to be more careful about what she eats when exercising. If I’m taking the trouble & effort to fling sweat around, I don’t like to mess that up too much by ruining the effort with too much junk food. It’s when I fall off the exercise wagon that I tend to run into the most trouble. Anyway, this time around the food part of the weight loss equation has taken precedence with me and so I know that my daily calorie allotment is on the low side. I think it would be fine if I was just walking, but when I add running to the equation, I tend to run out of steam. And that almost always seems to happen right around the two mile mark. I’m not sure how much of that is lack of conditioning and how much is the lower calorie thing, it’s probably some combination of the two.

Anyway, so it was a glorious day. The humidity has been chased out (at least temporarily) by the series of severe storms we suffered through here in New Hampshire last week and through the weekend (as an aside, I sure was glad that I hadn’t planned a vacation for last week, it would have been a complete dud). So, it was sunny with low humidity and the mosquitoes weren’t as bad as they have been. I ran a couple of my usual trails and was thrilled to find that I was able to run one of the shorter ones without having to stop to walk once! That was the first time I’ve been able to do that. It is only about .2 miles, so nothing to be too impressed about, but it has uphills and downhills and plenty of roots & rocks & a few logs to jump over. So, I was pretty pleased with myself. I then did my trail with all the big uphills, but the nice thing about it is that it has some lovely downhills and flat bits down the other side that are just wonderful to run through and it’s a great reward for all the suffering you have to do on the first half of that trail. And then coming back, I decided to run my little .2 mile trail in reverse back to the fire road. This time I had to take one walk break in the middle (by then, I had exceeded my two-mile energy limit), but did manage to run the rest of it. All-together I did just a hair shy of three miles, I’d say. Maybe 2.8 miles? Somewhere around that distance. Over all, It felt pretty good.