intofitness.net

I love summer.  For as far back as I can remember.  Long days of swimming at the pool with friends.  Being out all day.  The sun staying out until 9:00 pm sometimes.  Playing tennis until you can’t see the ball anymore.  Those are the joys of summer and daylight savings time.

Then there’s the depressing fall (which happens to be my wife’s favorite season).  It’s dark in the morning when you leave for work, and it’s either getting dark or dark when you arrive home.  Just plain depressing. 

Since I plan to ride my bike only once a week now and replace my cardio activities with training for runs, there is little light left during the afternoon after work to get in a good run.  Some good things about running on the Naval base are that:

• Sailors run on the streets of the base all the time
• Speed limits are strictly enforced
• There is very little traffic
• The base is closed, and pretty much safe from strange people
• There are plenty of places to run on a flat surface

So this morning, I implemented my darkness contingency running plan: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I intend to run at least 3.1 miles on the base in the morning before work.  Today I arrived on base a little after 6:00 AM.  The sun had still not come up.  After getting situated at my desk and going to the bathroom, I stretched out my hamstrings, quads, groin, and hip flexors (next time I have to remember to stretch my lower back and calves).  Just put my military id in my pocket and headed out the door!

It felt great.  Very miniscule tightness in my lower back and hamstrings, no tightness in my glutes.  I’d say the discomfort was about 1 to 2 %.  I attribute the improvement to the 15 minutes of stretching at the gym last night using the stretch machines.  I liked running with, ummmm, say about 99% of my range of motion.  What a difference.

In approximately the same distance as my previous run, I did 3.14 miles in 25:32, which is an 8:08 pace.  I’m stoked to shave off almost three minutes from my last run.  I think I’ll be ready for my first 5K in early November.  Heck, when you look at some of the winning times in my age group at around 19 minutes, I could be in serious contention for a winning medal by then.  Now that would be amazing.

My running appreciation just went up.  I’d say that I moved a couple of notches above hating to run to actually just below liking it.  The best thing about it so far: I can actually envision myself getting better at it.