Dear Diary...

Dear Diary,

I am a complete and utter failure...

Just kidding. What I am is a complete and utter idiot for thinking that I could go from no regular running to running even a pokey half-marathon using a high-intensity program in three months. A natural athlete might be able to pull it off, but not a force-myself-out-the-door type like me. The long and short of the last six months is this: I started training for the Bluenose half-M in the winter, travelled just enough for work to detrack my training a few times, developed a series of nagging Achilles' tendon problems that put me off even more, and went to sea for 45 days on a boat with no treadmill.

And to boot, the chef on the ship was Italian, so weight was, um, gained; let's leave it at that.

I'm back now, have brand new sparkly shoes, have run with reasonable regularity for the past three weeks, and have targetted a (more modest) 10K in October in order to get my (more hefty) rear in gear. To that end, I think it's finally safe to lift my head in running company once again.

I've never actually trained for a 10K before, so it's interesting already. I'm using the Running Room program from John Stanton's book, so there are more runs per week (five days generally), but at a lower intensity than the FIRST training I tried and blew in the spring. Since first starting to run a few years back, running farther was always my intent - speed never mattered, just staying out on the road for what I thought was an increasingly astonishing period of time. To that end, I went from my first 5K to a half marathon inside of eight months and then followed up two years later with a couple more halfs and a full.

Training for a bit of speed will be a fresh change for me and running the shorter training runs will help me get back into the swing of things and get running back into my life. I missed it.

I still want to give the FIRST program a go at some point, because I have a feeling that there is something definitely right about it, but I have to discipline myself much better and build up a better base of running or I'll just go down the same injury/despondance path of the spring.

Toodleedoo for now...