I did some long slow walking today. It felt good to be moving.
Just to provide some starting history (more to follow)....
A year or so ago I decided to try and become a 'runner' instead of a walker who occasionally runs. I have never had speed, but hoped to get faster as I got more comfortable with running. In 2006 I went through a divorce and my daughter got married and moved to Italy. Living alone was quite an adjustment (my son was staying with his father then) and I put on quite a bit of weight dealing with depression and eating out all the time.
In 2007, I was some pictures of myself after running the Ogden Marathon and realized I was actually overweight and needed to do something about it. In July, I joined a personal training gym. I was at 34% bodyfat and 170 pounds. I thought I was used to working hard, but found out that I was just used to training a lot and not working to my potential (I'm still working on that). I didn't notice much difference after 1 week of training when I did the Deseret News Marathon, but in the end of August ran the Park City Marathon with my running buddy, Leslie. My goal was to try and run 100 steps, walk 100 steps the entire race - my longest distance doing this before was about 14 miles. Not only did I accomplish that (including some killer uphills), but about mile 20 I got a second wind and started pushing harder. When I finished, I had lots of energy left and realized the training was paying off.
The first week in October was the St. George Marathon. My previous marathon best was 5 hours 47 minutes and I wanted to PR the race and break 5:40. My dream marathon race back then was a 5:30. Well, I battled food poisoning the entire race and spent a lot of time in the portapotties, but ended up finishing in 5:24 and was so proud of myself. | 