on running...

I can't remember when I downloaded Strava to my phone. It was definitely before Covid times... tonight I did a 4.8 mile run with the tri club (my second since post-Covid times) and when I was done and my Garmin sync to the phone was complete, I got the message:

"Congratulations, this is activity is your longest run on Strava!"

It is not the longest run I've ever done, but it *is* my longest run in quite a while, so I'm pretty proud of that. 

Last summer my hip was injured, and I had to go through a 4-month bout of physical therapy, followed by a painfully slow "Return to Running" program that let me up the mileage or time I ran in teeny tiny little increments over a few MORE months. Just in the last month, I am back up to running 5K pain-free. This is proof I can learn from my mistakes - I now know you SHOULD listen to and FOLLOW your orders from your physical therapist, because the outcome will be WAY BETTER than being out of running for four years because you made your injury worse by not doing what they said in the first place. 

In any case, last week, at the first tri club workout I went to in post-Covid times, my Garmin congratulated me on my "Fastest 5k!" My time was, to me, laughably slow, but I was happy to see the message because it was proof that I was improving, and that the tri club workouts pushed me to increase my pace. I have never, ever been a fast runner. I was thrilled to break one hour (just barely) when I ran the 10K Turkey Trot down in FL back in 2017. I would be thrilled to do that again, 5 years later... if the joints all hold up, that is!

Tonight's run is so many things, but mostly, it's happiness. I cannot believe that here in my mid-forties, having been overweight and in pain for over half my walking life, that I now love to run. I don't run fast, I generally don't run far (6 miles is kind of my max, and I *might* run that distance twice a year). This run makes the mental struggle of going through injury and following instructions to recover, no matter how slowly, WORTH IT. And that struggle makes those first couple good runs, no matter how slow, feel like kind of the best runs of your life.