New Years Day.. What a better way to start off the New Year than with a run? With this in mind, I checked the temperature and dressed appropriately.
Shorts, T-shirt and a light jacket I shouldn’t have brought. On New Years Day. In New York. Seriously. If this is global warming, I may be in favor of it!!
I asked my son if he wanted to join me, but he felt he had earned a day of rest – after the previous day’s run. I decided on a nice 4 miler, running up Denton. Denton is the hill that my old Cross Country coach used to have us do repeats of for our LONG hill sprints. Needless to say, that was my SLOW mile – but I did run the whole way up. I do have to admit however, I MIGHT have taken a small recovery walk after reaching the top. I really enjoyed it – and was tempted to turn my planned 4 mile run into a 7 mile run, but my catch phrase for 2012 is DON’T OVER DO IT!!! So I didn’t, despite my soul yelling at me to keep running!
With the 50 degree weather, you can bet EVERYONE was out. I was dodging kids on Christmas-bicycles, other runners, joggers and walkers of all types. It was great!
I have disabled the voice announcement on my cardio trainer – as this is also the year that I focus on my enjoyment of running, not that annoying little timer that leads me to do things that hurt myself! I can’t get myself totally away from it however – and I did check how I did at t:he end.
Mile 1: 8:31
Mile 2: 8:56
Mile 3: 9:46 (this was the one with the really big hill)
Mile 4: 8:31
4.4 miles according to cardio trainer, 4.7 according to Daily Mile done in 39:25. 6.7 mph per Cardio Trainer, 7.16 mph per Daily mile. I still like Daily Mile better.
Yesterday was my one day a week rest day (I am planning on at least 30 minutes of physical activity 6 days/week in 2012) due to the previous day. As a lot of our friends worked on New Years Eve, and none worked on monday – we decided to do a New Years Day party! I discovered (good lesson here for runners!) that lots of wine does not help tired legs recover. Seriously! I was surprised too! So my not-to-happy stomach and head also helped me decide to use my rest day yesterday.
The forecast for the next few days show the weather returning to reasonable temperatures from our current (And normal) weather of 16 degrees. That is a nice thing for the out-door runs! Down with treadmills!
I run, because I am a runner. Having realized that I have always "been a runner" - even when I went years with out running, I am learning how it has integrated itself in all aspects of my life. When I started running in highschool, my perspective on life changed. Funny that I didn't realize how much it had affected it until just recently.
Once and Future Runner 
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