Running.

I have unwittingly become a member of the Jeff Galloway running cult. (I rhapsodize about him the same way my newly-world-traveling aunt does about Rick Steves, her travel guide book guru.) I recently read Galloway’s Marathon book, and I dig a lot of his strategies. I’ve always broken up my run with short walk breaks, and here’s a fitness expert who not only approves of this, but actually recommends it. It makes a lot of sense that if you give a short break to the running muscles periodically, they will work better, last longer, and recover faster. I walk for about a minute out of every ten, and I’m able to keep pace and even speed up at the end of my longer runs. I don’t run for speed (nothing about my solid frame and short legs says "fast"), but I enjoy improving upon my own unhurried times.

Now that my runs are getting longer, I’m braving the fascinating world of sports nutrition. I’m still not a huge fan of Clif Bars or Luna Bars or any other bar packing that much protein and that little flavor, but I’m slowly getting used to them. I’ve had packets of Gu on my last couple of runs, and that is a sports fare that I can get behind. It gives me a great boost of energy, it takes care of some electrolyte replacement, it’s readily absorbed by the body as fuel, and it tastes like frosting! It’s like a reward – after an hour of running, I get to eat some chocolate!

I’m slowly increasing my runs – not by distance, but rather by time. I find it less stressful to measure in time, since an hour will always just be an hour, but five miles will vary in how long it takes me, depending on all sorts of things (temperature, humidity, hydration, lack of sleep , etc..). Yesterday I ran for 1:40, and next week my long run will be 2:00. I remember a few years back, the first time I made it to thirty minutes. I was ecstatic that I could finally run that long, and I certainly figured that was as far as I’d ever go. It’s exciting to find out that you can do something you never thought yourself capable of.