Ran 1 mile on Jordan River Parkway

About two months ago, my left leg swelled. My right leg was fine. It happened concurrently with my taking a new OTC remedy for joint-stiffness. I stopped the remedy, but the swelling didn't go away. I don't think the swelling was due to a running injury because there was no soreness or pain of any kind. My activities weren't limited. I decided to not run for a while to see if the swelling would go down. During this time while I wasn't running, I had a lot of activity walking around the yard and with my grand kids around the block, so I was getting aerobic activity of some kind. The swelling finally went down, although it isn't quite gone away, and I'm back to running. I'm limiting my distance today to give my body a chance to adjust to the running.

I'm glad I only went 1 mile today, because I was tired when I finished. When I was younger and stronger, it would take me about as long to come back from a layoff as I was off (a one-week layoff followed by a one-week recovery, for example). Now that I'm much older, and not nearly as strong, it is likely taking longer for a recovery than I was off. Being off a month probably means that I'll need two months for recovery. This means that May and June will be recovery months, and I can look forward to July as a continuation of my 3-mile long runs. This means that I can add 2 miles to my long run during the two-month recovery. This translates to about 1/4 mile per week. After one month of recovery, I'll freeze my Monday run at two miles, and this will be my rest-run. After two more weeks, I'll be up to 2.5 miles, and I'll freeze my medium run at that point. After another two weeks, my long run will be at 3 miles, my medium run at 2.5 miles, and my rest run at 2 miles. This looks good on paper; time will tell if it is good in real life. I make goals and form a plan, but often my body thinks differently than my brain, and my body always wins out.

I've been doing Galloway's run-walk-run method of alternating running and walking. I've been doing 1 minute of running and 1 minute of walking. I read via tweeter that Galloway and his wife had completed a marathon using a ratio of 15 seconds running and 15 seconds walking, and I thought I would try that ratio. I will need to use the new ratio for several workouts before I make a decision about it. It seemed OK today. I think I'll try 20 second cycles next week.

 

Experienced runners won't need to use run-walk-run, because they are likely used to running long distances, but the method is good for beginner runners and older runners, like me, who have bodies not as strong as the experienced runners.