I did it! I did it! I ran 1.5 miles

I've been waiting 14 months for this day. I ran my 1.5 mile route without stopping. Well, I did stop once on the way our for 15 seconds to look at the river to see if it was higher (I didn't need the rest and could have kept on running), and a second time at the turn around point; the path is too narrow to conveniently turn around without stopping. I stopped and walked 180 degrees (about 5 seconds) and then started running again, not stopping until I was finished.

Fourteen months ago, January 2009, I finished a 20 mile week with a 7-mile run on Saturday. On Monday I could only walk 100 feet. After 5 days in the hospital (blood clots) I was up to 400 feet in my walking. After I left the hospital, my wife and I walked every other day or so, and I got up to a mile and a half. At that point I started mixing in some running. I could tell during the late spring and summer that my body seemed stronger, but I couldn't run more that two or three hundred feet before I had to walk. I increased my mixture of walking and running to a distance of 4 miles. The amount of running compared to walking continued to increase, but I still had to stop and walk after running a bit.

When I left home this morning, I never dreamed I would make it the whole distance without walking. I am a firm believer in walking breaks in my longer runs but not in my shorter runs. In the past I wouldn't take walking breaks in runs up to five miles, but I would take them for runs longer than 5 miles. I expect that as I get older, I will take walking breaks in shorter runs.

My wakeup heart rate was 61, higher than I had expected (I have only been getting about 6-6 1/2 hours sleep each night during the past week). The temperature was 36 (F) when I left and 35 when I returned. Snow flurries were falling during my run. During the late morning we had heavy snow for half an hour, and I left for my run after the snow returned to just flurries.

The Jordan River looks to be two or three inches higher (5-7 cm) than it has been. It must have close to 10 times the water than it had during the winter. We haven't had our spring thaw yet, and when that happens a lot of water from the snow-melt in the mountains will come down into Utah Lake and the river. I won't be surprised if we have flooding in low places.