Return to Running

Seems like ages since the last time I ran the half marathon. Since that day many things have happened. My parents had their first USA visit the following week and spent some wonderful 6-months with them. During that duration of course my running suffered, I went down from running 20+ miles per week to hardly 20 miles a month and stopped all forms in August. A bit unavoidable actually, can be attributed to helping my wife Ingrid move to San Diego from texas, and then mid of august we started a 2 1/2 month US road trip. Every possible weekend was spent on the road and weekdays were spent shopping and socializing. I really enjoyed that time. The net result of all that fun, I went up from a reasonable 179lbs to a well fed 189lbs today. Dusting off some rust, I started hitting the gym last week and that paid off, because I did my first near 4 miler in ages and I feel great. What a nice beautiful day, 65F sunny no wind, a perfect day as one can ever hope for. I must say hitting the stair climber in the gym for 20 mins hits the spot, its a killer workout at level 10 out of 20, and doing 20 mins is a challenge. That stair master workout paid off today, no pain after the run, no sores and actually felt good. I think hitting the stairs couple of times a week is now a must in my routine. I will spend the next couple of weeks just doing timed runs, hitting the road for 40 mins on sunny days, and on rainy cold days hitting the gym 20 mins treadmill, 20 mins stair master. No distance or speed goal. I will probably try to hit one weekend for a 60 min run, but lets say just maybe, I need to start getting to enjoi the run and so long runs can probably wait till mid of december. I also want to check out races in dec and jan, I think its time to hit a 10k and plan for a 13 miler half marathon for spring.