Hello 5 Miles!

Hello 5 miles! 

Yesterday I ran  5.03 miles around Lake Miramar. 
The weather was absolutely gorgeous due to the Santa Ana winds.  It was bright, sunny, blue skies, and a perfectly clear 76 degrees.
But what motivated me even more was to make it all the way around the lake, which is five miles.  You see, I haven’t run more than 4.85 miles on a run since August 28, 2010.  (Exactly one year and five months ago.)

What took me so long to get back to running longer distances?  It’s been a mix of injuries, illnesses, and plain old laziness.  In January 2010 I started training to run the San Diego Rock N Roll Half Marathon (13.1 miles).  I ran the Seattle Rock N Roll Half Marathon in June 2009, and I wanted to run the same race but in my home city in June 2010.  Almost every Saturday morning I got up super-early to run my long-distance runs with West Coast Road Runners.  The mileage gradually built up and the long runs got to about 12 miles.  I ran the Rock N Roll San Diego successfully, but I was tired of running long distances after two years of training.  A few weeks after that, I was running in Encinitas one Saturday in September when I felt like my right knee locked up.  But it wasn’t my knee that was hurt.  My right IT band was really tight and it hurt.  So I stopped running for a couple of months and did cross training like Jillian Michaels’ “30 Day Shred” DVD.  My right IT band didn’t feel much better by November 2010, so I went to see my doctor and got referred to physical therapy.  I was in PT for two months.  In the meantime, I started swimming at my local YMCA in January 2011.  I wanted to add swimming laps to my workout repertoire, because it’s low impact and awesome exercise.  I did that for a few weeks.  Then I got hit with a nasty sinus infection that lasted for over a month.  Throughout 2011 I would get hit with two more sinus infections, one in July and one in November.   Through it all, I kept running shorter distances 1-4 miles, but never made it to five miles until yesterday.

So yesterday I started out taking it easy.  I wanted to run the 5 miles without muscle fatigue and without pain.  I paced myself.  I started out going clockwise around the dam.


The sky was really blue and it was super-clear due to the Santa Ana winds. 


So clear that I could see all the way out to the ocean.




Seeing this sign means I was almost there!  (I also had my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch so I knew exactly how far I’ve run.)


I was exhilarated to make it all the way around the lake for the five mile run for the first time in 17 months!  Today my legs feel fine, a little bit tired but not sore.  I hope to continue to build up my weekend long-run miles until maybe up to eight miles.  (I run short distances on the weekdays, mostly around two miles.)  I don’t feel like running farther distances than eight miles.  But I’m happy and thankful to be healthy enough to run up to five miles now.  :)