Easy Like Sunday Morning

On December 12th, 2011 I ran for one minute.

I have been adding time ever since.

Some weeks were repeats of the week before but I never reduced the number of minutes I ran. I just kept going up and up.

It has been motivating and extremely validating to watch the minutes, and the distance I could run, increase day by day.

Now that I'm actually following a (sorta) half marathon training plan, I have to respect the need for easy, or recovery, weeks.

After Saturday's 14k run, I started my easy week. Two forty minute runs and then a 10k run this Saturday.

Forty minutes?!?

That seemed really long two months ago - now it seems really short. Like 'what's the point?' short. 'Why bother creating running clothes laundry?' short.

Thankfully, I've trained for enough races to know what the point is. Keep the body moving but let it recover from the three weeks of increased mileage that it just completed. Not respecting recovery weeks is a surefire way to get injured.

Still though, it's going to be hard to reign it in. Particularly considering that Friday is a holiday so the pool will be closed. Two swims and two short runs are going to make this week feel very lazy.

The fun news is that, on my next easy week, I'll be running a 10k race. My little sis and her colleagues signed up to run the Toronto Yonge Street 10k race. My sis is no longer able to run so I agreed to take her bib and run it for her. Who wouldn't want to join 15,000 runners heading down historic Yonge Street? I've only run two other 10k races in my life, preferring the longer half marathon distance. Both of those 10k races took about 70 minute to complete. But I've had so many great 10k runs lately that I figure it might be fun to go on record with a 59:59 race time. We'll see...