Tag: running

fitness · running · training

Tracy’s C25K is taking longer than 9 weeks and that’s okay

Tracy I1 Comment
Image description: Overhead shot of white running shoes on a dark hardwood floor. Shoes show a bit of wear and tear, laces untied. Photo by Tracy Isaacs

Back in early April I posted about easing back into running with the Couch to 5K program. It’s a nine-week program and I had high hopes of being able to complete it as written, within the nine weeks. In my original post I said I’d report back at the end of April with an update, and I thought I’d be done by the end of May.

Well, life has a way of not cooperating with the best laid plans, doesn’t it?

Things started to go sideways when late April got ridiculously busy with the end of classes. Then I had an intensive photography workshop in Indiana where it rained pretty much all the time. I took my gear but I had neither time nor energy nor weather to get out for my runs.

And then I four days after I got back I lost my mother. And that was it. For the next several weeks life was a surreal blur of grief, spending time with others in grief, and making plans to celebrate the life of a wonderful and much-loved woman who we were expecting to be with us for some years to come. It was very sad. And there was no room for a training program.

I have regained my footing enough to get back on track and have almost completed Week 7 of the program. The big jump from reasonable walk and run intervals happens in week 5, where the third run suddenly has a 20-minute continuous run flanked on each end by 5 minutes of walking to warm up and cool down.

Week 6, which is behind me now, goes back to more run-walk intervals but ends with a 25-minute run (as always, 5 minutes of warm-up and cool-down). And Week 7 is just three 25-minute runs, repeating the third day of Week 6. I don’t anticipate any new hurdles (let me touch some wood!) to get in my way. If I’m right, that means I’ll bring the program to a close in the first week of August.

So how’s it going? On balance I’d say it has gone and is generally going well. I did not use the C25K app. Instead I set up the intervals on my Intervals Pro app, and when we got to the longer continuous runs of 20 and then 25 minutes I used the Nike Run Club apps guided runs with Coach Bennett. He’s cheesy but oh so encouraging and makes me feel like I can do it. And so I did that for the first 25 minute run. The other day I did one on my own, using my own inner voice to self-coach in Coach Bennett style. That was my best run to date and I felt a real sense of accomplishment.

I felt nervous about the 20-minute run in week 5 and the 25-minute runs at the end of week 6 and throughout week 7. I have not done a lot of continuous running training in my life, opting mostly for the 10-1 run-walk intervals that the Running Room promotes in its run club, which is where I got my start.

There is an ongoing debate about whether to do continuous running or run-walk intervals. Some people say that over distances the pace balances out and you get a little break to look forward to every 10 minutes. That makes it psychologically easier for some people. I have tried both ways but I admit that I feel like more of a badass when I do continuous. I also find it in some ways easier to maintain a slightly slower consistent pace for longer than to start running again after a one-minute walk break. The countdown at the end of the break sometimes feels as if it’s signalling a fresh new punishment. It’s all attitude and different things work for different people, but at the moment, not taking walk-breaks makes running a more positive experience overall for me. I also had my best 10K time ever (way back when) after the only time I consistently trained for continuous running rather than 10-1 intervals.

I am feeling enough back on track that I even have plans for when I’m done this program and can do 30 minutes of continuous running. I don’t think I will hit a 30-minute 5K, but even in my 50s I couldn’t do that. I’m going to do the Run Less, Run Faster cross-training plan that follows the FIRST method where you do to do three “quality”run and two cross-training workouts (I’m going to swim) each week. I’m also adding some resistance training and a couple of yoga sessions each week. The runs in that program are purposeful: one tempo, one speed intervals session, and one long run.

I’m working on the 5K distance and signing up to do a local 5K in September. I’ll post more about that in a bit. Meanwhile, wish me luck as I embark on the final couple of weeks of C25K. I can see the value in this program and I recommend it for anyone just starting out or wanting to get back into running.

Comparison Is the Thief of Everyone’s Joy
challenge

Comparison Is the Thief of Everyone’s Joy

Mina1 Comment

A few weeks ago, I shared my excitement about a longer run I’d done with a close friend, a runner and occasional running companion. Some context: as those of you who read my posts know, I’ve set myself the challenge of doing a 21k run once a month this year. This is a stretch, given I never ran that distance once last year and had foot surgery. It’s a challenge I think can complete. And each time I’ve set out so far this year, I’ve felt a frisson of fear. So, when I finish, I’m relieved, with a side dish of woohoo. When I shared, my friend said, with real frustration: “Every time I think I’ve done a good workout, I hear what you’ve done, and I feel like a loser.”

Crap. My first instinct was guilt. Am I a jerk? Why did I even need to say it? Did I offer the news in a showoff tone? Was my timing bad? Out for dinner on a Friday night. I am still thinking through how I might have said things better or whether I should have held off. I’m still examining my own motivations for sharing. Why do I even need to? (Even as I’m sharing my accomplishment here, too).

Sure, I know that the comparison isn’t mine to manage. Still, I don’t want to make my friend feel bad. Nor do I want to have the wind sucked out of my sails. The math her brain ran wasn’t her workout versus her goals. It was her workout versus mine. And she felt like she’d lost. And then I lost, too. Because comparison is a rigged game. Nobody wins.

This is happening all the time. Someone gets a promotion and we audit our own career, instead of truly celebrating their achievement. Someone posts a beautiful photo of themselves, and we scrutinize ourselves in the mirror, alert to everywhere the crow has stepped. The scoreboard is running 24/7 in the background, and we are behind.

I have those game announcer voices, telling me someone else has more. More success. More money. More love. More beauty. More … you name it. All of which can spiral me down the I’m not enough drain.  So much noise.

When is anything enough?

I know. You know. We know. Enough is enough when we decide that it is so. We live in a maelstrom of enablers (hello social media), which inundate us with opportunities to compare and despair. The real accounting has to happen inside our own selves, or it will eat at us in perpetuity.

Our work is to find that tiny pause between the comparison and the collapse. My longtime mindfulness practice serves me here. When I give the voices space to rant and offer them gentle support. Plus, the slow accumulation of wisdom that comes from long years of repeatedly recognizing the fruitlessness of comparison.

There’s no finite supply of fitness, or success, or beauty, or achievement being divided up among us. My enough does not necessitate someone else’s not enough. Even if the voices inside our heads want us to believe that this life is a zero-sum game.

Oh, and also, when I told my youngest brother that I’d run my April 21k, he told me that he’d done seventeen (yes, 17) 21k runs already this year. Did I feel frustrated? Maybe the teeny, tiniest bit. Mostly, I thought, wow. He’s on a streak. Also, youngster!

On May 1st, I did my 21k for the month. I woke up with that pre-run anxiety. I arrived home on my doorstep with a thrill. A reminder of the joy that lives inside my body.

Getting back to it…again
fitness · motivation · planning · running

Getting back to it…again

Tracy I1 Comment
A graphic featuring the text '5K' alongside an icon of a person running, set against a yellow background.

I’m probably not alone in having stops and starts in my fitness routines. My favourite themes over the years have been about starting small, doing less, getting over injuries with small steps. And that’s where I am again after deciding that I would not participate in winter running this year. It’s been a long winter. I got out there today after a four-month hiatus.

Since I’ve never really managed to stick with a consistent running routine for more than a few months at a time since just before the pandemic, I feel as if I am starting at the beginning.

Today was the first nice day of nice spring running weather, where I could run in shorts and a t-shirt. And so I chose it to be my day one of the beginners running program, Couch to 5K.

Couch to 5K is probably the most widely used learn to run app. It’s a nine-week program designed to get someone from not running at all to running for 30 continuous minutes over the course of three runs a week for nine weeks.

It starts easy and that is just what I want after a long hiatus. Week one has three runs the same: 5 minutes warm up walk, and then 8 intervals of 1 minute of running followed by 1 1/2 minutes of walking, and closing out with a 5 minute walk.

I’m going in with beginners mind because despite having many kilometres under my feet, I feel like a newbie. And I’m open to learning something new about what I can do and how I can do it.

I have let go of what I “used to be able to do,” and am focusing on what I can do today.

Will report back at the end of April!

Learning to Be (more than okay) Alone
fitness

Learning to Be (more than okay) Alone

Mina4 Comments

Learning to Be (more than okay) Alone

As you may have noticed these past months, I’ve been exploring how it is to do various things alone—drinking champagne, eating dessert—and those explorations were, of course, really about doing other things alone—hiking, biking around a new city, lazing in a city park and so on. I’ve been thinking a lot about all the qualities and sensations of being alone. All the different things I do alone. How each thing feels different when I do it alone, from when I do it with another person. How some things, which I never thought could be good alone, are.

In fact, it is this discovery, that more things than I expected are actually quite good when done alone, that has provoked this current deep dive into the varieties of aloneness. It took me some time to get here. My marriage definitively ended about two and a half years ago, so I’ve had some practice at this alone business. And I resisted the potential for good in the experiences until quite recently.   

Sports were where I really learned how to do things alone. Specifically, training for ultra marathons was the first time I started clocking serious time alone. Now I do almost every sport, almost all the time, alone, except my occasional Saturday morning runs with friends. Before the ultras, I had multiple running partners. We kept each other company on long training runs preparing for marathons. When I got into the ultras, I didn’t have much company and began to figure out this alone-ness. Until I surprised myself by enjoying the liberated feeling of heading out for hours alone in the mountains or threading through different parks in the city.

In these last few years, I’ve gone through this same process with quite a lot of other activities.

An Incomplete List of Things I Do Alone (which I used to do mostly with another person)

All the sports, most of the time, including …

Run—on roads and trails

Cycle—on roads and trails

Cross country ski

Snowshoe.

Hike

Yoga

Cross-Fit

Also …

Binge Netflix

Go to the movies

Fix magnetic kitchen cupboard door clasps

Rehang the tricky, heavy mirror over the fuse panel

Grocery shop

Go to the farmer’s market

Cook meals

Eat meals

Go to a coffee shop for the occasional breakfast or afternoon macchiato

Go home after dinner with friends (including my own birthday dinner)

Take the subway home late at night

Plan trips

Fly on planes

Wake up on weekend mornings (well really all mornings)

Dance

Go for walks

Take naps

Sleep

An Incomplete List of Things I Haven’t Quite Figured Out How to Be More Than Okay About Doing Alone:

  • Go to the theatre, live dance performance or the movies. It turns out that what I love about live performance or seeing a movie in the theatre is diving into conversation afterward with my companion, to prolong the delight or bemoan the time we can’t get back.
  • Swim in a pond or lake. Partly because of water safety drilled into me at long ago summer camp. And I know that’s not the whole reason.
  • Cook an elaborate meal.

With each experience (on these lists and so many others) there is a process of acclimatization to aloneness, like what I went through in sports. A process of familiarization. Of figuring out how it (whatever it is) works alone. What works alone. How the experience is different. What are the pleasures. And the disappointments. Because to be sure, there are those too. Which is why the title of this piece includes the phrase, more than okay, and not some version of the word, joy.  Most certainly, some alone-ness is joyful. And I’m not fully emancipated from my deep-seated desire to be in connection with another human being while experiencing life. Chocolate cake is delicious, and it tastes better with someone I love (friend, family or intimate partner).

A slice of chocolate layer cake from Yiseul Han on unsplash

And then there’s last night, when I finally closed my computer after a disheartening study session for an exam I’m taking in a couple of weeks and, sitting on a chair to take a breath, I had a vivid and visceral desire for a light hand on my shoulder. A gentle kiss on the top of my head.   

The past couple of weeks my Saturday runs have been alone. I’ve gone up to the Cloisters Museum, a run I’ve been doing for more than 30 years. Every person who has ever been beside me on that run comes with me in my heart. And I’m there, at every age I’ve ever been on that stretch of road. Still here. In the company of spirits who lighten my step.

Saying Goodbye to My High Heels
fitness

Saying Goodbye to My High Heels

Mina1 Comment

I have a bunion on my right big toe. Also, arthritis. Same toe. Poor little digit. A first cortisone shot, disappeared the pain. For about 18 months. Then it came back last summer after a sprained left ankle wobbled my gait, putting more pressure on my right foot. A second cortisone shot provided short-lived relief. My doctor warned me about the diminishing returns. I didn’t expect them to be quite so diminished. Now the pain has flared to a steady, yet manageable level. I’m allowed to run. Even moderately long distances.

What I can’t do is wear heels. And I love heels. I used to be able to not only wear heels but also walk miles in them. Ridiculous. Vertiginous. Platform. Spike. Precarious. I felt sexy and kick ass. I loved them all the more, because I wore the heels after running miles. I loved the crackle of the contradictory footwear coexisting and all the meaning they contained about who I was.  I wasn’t only girly. I wasn’t only a runner.

Of course, the heels weren’t truly comfortable. My feet would be sore at the end of an evening. Well, my feet were sore at the end of a long run, too. I was thrilled when Citibike (the shared social bike system) came to New York. Less walking in heels. More riding a bike in heels (so fun). I’m not sure which one caused the bunion—the running or the heels. I have my suspicions, based on which one has become inaccessible. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The pain is.

I would look in my closet and long to wear the heels so neatly aligned on my shoe rack. Every once in a while, I would try to put them on, searing myself with the pain. Why couldn’t I just get rid of them? After all, I’ve been in purge mode these last couple of years. I left my marriage with almost nothing from our joint home. I moved around a bit, trimming down my life. I shaved off my long hair.

Yet, I’ve never parted with my heels, even as I knew I couldn’t wear them. Then, a month ago, I thought, now is the time. I sent a little video tour of the shoes to a friend who wears the same size. I brought her a giant bag of heels on the night of my birthday. I am so glad she’s going to enjoy them.

I also felt an amount of grief that I judged to be inordinate. They’re just shoes. Yes. And they were a symbol of a part of me that I don’t want to lose. Insouciant. Bold. Attractive. Now I have to find that in myself, without the shoe-assist. Or maybe that sense of self is already there, if I can just find it. I felt good in heels, because I was strong. A runner. An athlete.  Not was. Am. Because I’m still running (and biking and dancing and cross-country skiing and, and …). In the choice between running shoes and heels, there’s no contest. My running shoes are soulmates.  

The night my marriage blew apart, I went out to meet a friend in desperation. As I walked out the door of what would soon no longer be my home, the high heel on my patent leather boot from Paris snapped off. Total destruction. No chance of repair. It’s been just over three years since that night. A few days ago, I learned that my divorce was final. I had dinner with the same friend a few hours later. Wearing sneakers with glitter. She was wearing fabulous, crazy platform sandals. I felt a pique of desire for her shoes. For that feeling. And then I caught a glimpse of that sparkle inside of me. Waiting for me to see myself.

athletes

What Kind of Headline is This? Ultramarathoner Wins Race “While Stopping to Breastfeed Along the Way”

Diane Harper3 Comments

The title of this article about Canadian ultrarunner Stephanie Case winning a the 100 mile race Ultra-trail in Snowdonia, Wales, on May 17, six months after giving birth, really gets my goat.

The article itself is just fine. It talks about how 42 year-old Case took three years off from running and this was her first big race since then. It’s honest about some of the challenges she faced both with her body and with managing the logistics of feeding her baby. Case talks about the importance of supporting new moms, and allowing them the space to pursue things they love, while also recognizing that stories like hers risk setting impossible standards for women.

Case did a truly remarkable thing. She ran 100 km in a little over 16 hours, starting a half hour behind the elite runners in the first wave. She did it a mere six months after pregnancy and birth, something that can be really hard on a woman’s body.

Ultramarathoner Stephanie Case takes a selfie while on the trail in northern Wales.

But would there have been the same attention to her story if she had been using formula, as many women do for all kinds of reasons? Somehow I doubt it. I still see way too much “breast is best” social media shaming of women can’t or chose not to breastfeed. Full disclosure: I am very much in the “breast is great if it works for you and your baby, but fed is best” camp. Formula was invented for a reason, and millions of children are alive because they had that option (especially in countries with access to clean water and good quality formula).

Still, if a stupid headline is what it takes to highlight the accomplishments of an amazing woman doing a really hard thing, I’ll swallow my grumpiness and celebrate her.

Finding Ground When Home Is Elusive
fitness

Finding Ground When Home Is Elusive

Mina

Yesterday the home I lived in for 28 years was sold. I will likely never call another place home for as long.

In the past three years, I have moved three times, finally landing where I am now just over two years ago. Still, this place I am now, while it is nice, it is not home. Knowing that I will have to move again, I have resisted many elements of settling in-ness. Because, you know, that would just be more stuff to move. For example, I don’t have measuring cups. Or serving bowls or platters. I don’t have a lasagna dish. Or obscure spices for Ottolenghi’s complicated dishes. Things that used to make me feel like a grown up. A person who has groups of friends over for dinner. Plus, given the current state of affairs here in the United States, where I’ve lived for more than 30 years, I can’t help wondering if I should move home to Canada. Or elsewhere.

All this is in direct conflict with my strong nesting inclinations.

So, how do I find ground, when I have no nest? Okay—that’s a complicated visual. Nests are high in trees. The ground is, well, far below. Still, you get the picture of settling, of nestling after a long flight. Parts of me feel in constant flight and they are tired.

Nest in a pine tree by Luke Brugger on Unsplash

Getting into my body offers my most reliable respite—running, hiking, skiing, biking, yoga, dancing, crossfit, pilates and so on. Of all of these, running outside offers me the most solace. With each step, the earth beneath my feet brings me home to my very physical existence.

For that moment of footfall, I land. Rest my wings. Find ground. Come home to my body. May that be enough. For now.    

Is Enough Abundant?
fitness

Is Enough Abundant?

Mina1 Comment

As the holidays and 2024 approach, I declared the start of my personal new year on October 28th. The day after the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death, in a year of substantial loss—in addition to my mother there was the loss of my beloved 17-year-old cat, the loss of my 28-year marriage, the loss of my home and financial security and the (thankfully temporary) loss of my health. All of which I’ve written about here during the course of these last months.

I want to look forward. And, I’m struggling to feel like I’m enough, that my life is enough and, to put it bluntly, that I have enough resources. What does enough even mean? And how about this business of abundance? Abundance is one of the words of the moment. I feel inundated by invitations to reframe my thinking, to have an abundance mentality. Most days now, I fail to have an abundance mentality. Enough feels like a stretch goal.

Recently, I’ve been listening to Beautiful Chorus chants when I meditate. One of my current favourites is I Am Enough, which I often follow with their chant Abundance. After all, I’m not against abundance. I would like to have an abundance mentality. I just can’t seem to achieve it. I notice the chants feel different. My body yearns toward enough, as if my cells know that I’m enough and want me to know that I’m enough. And my body often resists the abundance chant, as if my cells don’t believe that abundance is possible, or that the whole notion of abundance is just a quick fix fad or worse abundance is greedy.

Egg carton from Abundance Acres Farm with sunflowers from the farmer’s market, too. It turns out I’ve been buying abundant eggs.

Or, are enough and abundance actually the same thing? Maybe if I could truly feel like I am enough, then I would have achieved that elusive abundance mentality. Are they both just different ways of expressing a feeling of wholeness?  This is a philosophical cycle that could end up with me dancing on the head of a pin with the angels. My mother used to say that when my father would come back from synagogue with a story of an extended debate about, say, whether using a light switch was allowed on the sabbath. She’d say, “Now it’s just angels dancing on the head of a pin.” And, as I wrote this, I wondered, where did her saying come from, only to learn that it refers to tedious religious controversies from the middle ages.1

Enough with the angels. Let me get concrete.

I’ve faced some health challenges lately. So, I’m even more acutely sensitive to my level of energy when I run, or really do any physical activity. Over the many months of slower and slower runs, as my energy depleted, I had re-calibrated my expectations. Just getting out was enough. At first, as the medication returned me to the energy level that I was accustomed to in the past, every drop of extra ease and speed in my body felt like abundance. Now, only a few weeks later, as I settle back into the new-old normal, I notice that feeling of abundance recalibrating back to enough. In other words, I see my mindset shift. As if abundance is an unstable state and enough is the stable state. Abundance is an overreach. I couldn’t possibly merit abundance and anyway it’s a fickle, fair-weather friend. I’m scared that if I relate to my energy as abundant (versus enough), then it will be taken away.

To which the universe offered me this: Feeling frisky on a recent run, I picked up my pace, only to ping my hamstring. Really? The universe can’t let me have a quick run? I need to be put in my place that fast? As if proving my point about the unreliability of abundance.

Sigh.

And then I noticed that right behind the frustration was another feeling. Oh the joy, to be running fast enough to ping my hamstring. There was a part of me reveling in the privilege of the ping. And I had a glimpse of the abundance mentality. Being alive and running strong is enough and abundant. The universe invited me to let the feeling fill me up. And then reminded me not to get attached.

Maybe that’s the difference between the two—I am enough, even if I don’t know it all the time. Everyone is enough. As they are. Right now. We can’t be attached to enough. We are. It is. Whereas abundance happens in the moments we notice that we are enough or that what life has delivered to us is enough. Noticing that causes our cup to run over. To know I am enough, or that what is is enough, is abundant. And it’s hard to feel so fulfilled and not get attached and want that feeling of enough-ness to last. That’s the slipperiness of abundance.

Or not. I may still be dancing with the angels.

Three examples:

  1. I accept a 25% pay cut to continue doing work I love, that feels meaningful, because the company is in a tight spot until it finds more investors and/or earns more profits.
  2. I get the news that my kidneys are functioning normally, after months of alarming blood tests.
  3. I arrive at the Citibike stand, needing an e-assist bike, because the ride home is long and I’ve already danced for 2 hours. There are plenty of e-bikes docked at the stand, but all are red lighted and unavailable, except one, which also has enough charge for the distance I need to go. I cruise home in the autumn sunshine.

Enough or abundance?

  1. ↩︎
Music About Moving for Moving
fitness · running

Music About Moving for Moving

elan.paulson2 Comments

I don’t love running or jogging. I’ve never felt naturally good at it, and without practice I don’t get good enough at it to start to enjoy it. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle of inactivity.

I have gone through spurts of jogging, a couple times a week for a couple months, usually with other folks to spur me along. Often, though, I don’t stick with group running. I like to chat more than run, and I can’t do both at the same time!

When I run also I can’t seem to concentrate on spoken audiobooks or podcasts. I used the app Run with Zombies for a season or two, but I stopped because I wasn’t compelled by the story and I didn’t have the energy to build the virtual world on the app.

What does seem to keep me moving is fast music played at top volume. This website advises me that for jogging I need 120-125 beats per minute and for running 140-145 beats per minute. (For the latter, I don’t think I’ll ever go that fast, but it’s nice to know.) Natalie wrote about working out with Lizzo, and I’m going to add her to my list.

Here are a few of my fave playlist songs that are about getting up and getting moving. Warning to non-mid-lifers: they are old.

  • Because We Can (Fatboy Slim). From the soundtrack Moulin Rouge, this song has simple lyrics that inspire me to keep moving: “because [I] can (can can)!”
  • I Like to Move It (Real 2 Real). Like the cancan song, the simple lyrics repeat as I run until I have no choice to believe them.
  • Momentum (Amy Mann). Another soundtrack song, from Magnolia, about moving despite (or perhaps because of) how one is feeling. I appreciate the song’s honesty.
  • The Distance (Cake). Like Momentum, for me this song is about dedication to the race, regardless of winning, losing, or anything else.
  • Get Up (Technotronic). Classic 80’s vibes. Pairs well with Gonna Make U Sweat (C&C Music Factory) and Let Your Backbone Slide (Maestro Fresh Wes).
  • Pump It (Black Eyed Peas). This song (or any of the remixes) make me feel cool, even when I am overheating.
  • Body Movin’ (Beastie Boys). 90s vibes. I normally spend this song trying to remember the lyrics, so I pay less attention to my own tiredness.

Perhaps it is better to run in silence and focus on my breathing and body feelings, but sometimes it’s too much fun to revisit these oldies while being blasted to distraction.

Of course you have noticed that there aren’t enough cis/trans women artists—so please suggest some for me that you love to run or move to in the comments!

fall · fitness · fun · race report · running

Tracy’s first running event since 2019!

Tracy I1 Comment

After more than three years of not doing anything “official,” I signed up for a 5K and ran it last weekend. And it was a blast. A few of my running group did it too. None of us went in with big dreams and all of us had a fun time.

Image description: Six runners, arms linked, some with race bibs, five wearing medals around their necks, smiling, start line and fall foliage in the background.

Considering that my last event was the Around the Bay 30K back in 2019 (see my overly optimistic report of that ill-fated day here — it was ill-fated because the next day I had a back injury and shortly after that I had achilles issues and basically I didn’t run much again for about nine months), the 5K felt like an odd choice. Not because there is anything wrong with 5K, but because it isn’t a distance that I needed to train for since I run more than that regularly (our Sunday minimum is usually around 7.5 and we often do more than that). I’ve never done an event that I haven’t had to train for.

I also had difficulty deciding what my goal should be. I really haven’t gotten back on track with any regular routine since the ATB in 2019, and when I go out I go out for fun, not for fast results. So I decided that my goal would be to come in under 40 minutes. That might seem like an unchallenging goal to some, but I wanted something that I could actually meet. Indeed, a friend who hasn’t run since she was in her thirties literally laughed at me when I stated that goal, as if it was ridiculously easy.

On race day I felt good. It was a gorgeous autumn day and we met just over 1K from the start line and ran there as a little warm-up. Unlike events in the past, I didn’t need to concern myself with whether I could make the distance. I decided I would stick to my usual 10-1 intervals that I do every Sunday.

In the end, most of my group broke away from me within the first 500m, with one falling into place a little bit behind. I didn’t end up wanting to walk for the one-minute walking intervals, and I was pacing reasonably well all things considered. My chip-time was 35:19 and I felt strong–only mildly regretting that I hadn’t pushed just a little bit harder to come in under 35 minutes. In any case, it gave me a new goal for my sixtieth birthday, which is to try to shave a few minutes off of my 5K time and perhaps even complete it in 30:00. It was also a fun time for the group, all of whom were smiling at the end, as you can see in our photo.

If there is a moral to this story, it’s that going back to something I used to do, and keeping my expectations very low, can actually feel really good. Have you returned to something that you’d set aside? If so, I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments.