Tag: running

I used to be an avid runner. There was a time when I put in 25-30 miles a week, ran 5K races and complete the Long Beach Island 18-mile run.

Then, for a lot of reasons, most of them not very good, I stopped. My running became sporadic at best, my weight ballooned and with it the statistics that doctors point to as problems.

I kept saying I’d get back to the road, to the gym, to my old runner’s ways. Kept saying it, over and over and over.

Until two weeks ago. That’s when I decided to get serious again, laced up my running shoes and hit the road. Since then — March 27 — I’ve managed nine runs at modest paces. The goal right now is not speed, but distance and consistency.

At the same time, we’ve been increasing the frequency and distance of our dog walks, so I have been getting an additional two-plus miles in a day that way.

I hit a wall over the weekend and should have taken a few days break. Instead, I hit the gym on Monday, hit the weights for my legs and then tried to run — and while I managed two miles, it was difficult. Tuesday was supposed to be a rest day, but I walked the dogs for two miles.

So here I am on a chilly Wednesday morning with a sinus headache and sore legs standing in the breeze getting ready to run. I did some minor warm-ups and got started. Then stopped. And started and stopped, and so on. I walked and ran this morning, a total of two miles — an awful effort that has me disappointed. Plus, I rolled my ankle midway through when I hit a branch.

I have no idea what all of this will mean as my training goes forward, but I need to be ready to run a decent 5K come April 28, when Hugs for Brady holds its annual race.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

It has been quite some time since I went out for a morning run, so I might have been forgiven for blowing off the running during my 10-day stay at Fairleigh Dickinson, where I am beginning work on my master’s of fine arts in creative writing.

Running on the FDU campus presents an interesting challenge that, given my recent running history, is a bit daunting. The campus is nearly all hill and valley, many of the inclines pushing 45 degress and more. That’s a brutal climb generally, but when you haven’t been out and you aren’t used to hill work, it becomes nearly insurmountable. The uphill runs are enough to stop you in your tracks — and I had to slow to a near-walk several times — but the downhills may be worse, forcing momentum on you and badly stressing the legs. Downhill essentially is one long continuous pounding.

But I have to do it, have to push through this. My goal this week is to get out about five or six times at about two miles a clip, and hope that the hills open things up for me on far more level ground at home.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

It is beautiful out, warm and sunny and only the faintest of breezes. Needless to say, I ran outside, gutting out four miles and feeling pretty good about a 10-mile week.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

It was a bit chilly on the run this morning — and now I know why. The sun has given way to clouds and it is now misting. So I guess I was lucky to get my three, very slow, miles in this morning.

Go me!

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

It was a beautiful morning — and a beautiful day, really — and I took the sneakers outside and hit the pavement. Three miles in a very slow 30 minutes (ugh!), but I ran then lifted and managed four days this week. Total mileage for the week: 13.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.