I am trying to listen to my body. I have various aches and pains, but if anything seemed wrong with a muscle or tendon, I would not work out, or just walk. I have had so many disappointing injuries over the years when training. I make some headway on weight loss, but then strain a muscle and it comes to a bad end. So far this month, I have been fortunate to have some cooperation from my body on these jogs. I have increased the distance much faster than I had originally planned, but I stretch a lot, concentrate on form and breathing, and consciously choose to relax. I form a mental image of my body as being the color yellow as I run. In sync with breathing in and out, I visualize the color green starting from my head, and moving to my shoulders, chest, waist, thighs, calves, and feet. As the color green moves downward, I imagine my muscles relaxing, my breathing as regular and not labored, and area by area, this seems to work for me to relax and avoid tightening up. I don't know if this would work for someone else, but I think it is helping me, and especially when I start to feel a tightness in a calf muscle or a hamstring, I visualize relaxing the "yellow" in my body and turning it "green"-- loose, pliable, and injury free. Might sound silly, but I am a really big guy who is able to run 4 miles again (as of today), without injury so far. Something I am doing is working.
I haven't mentioned music yet. I really need fast music - dance, techno, etc - to help me run. It makes a huge difference when I do. I run and walk with an ipod now. In past years, cassette players stretched tapes and ate them, CD players skipped no matter how carefully I help them. MP3 players are a massive step forward for light, portable music. I also listen to language lessons or news podcasts while walking. It makes me feel that I am being productive in multiple areas.
Today, walked on treadmill .9 mile/15 minutes, jogged 4 miles at a 10 minute/mile pace, then walked/cooled off a little for 5 or 6 minutes, another .25 mile or so. Very encouraging. The longest run I have done in months. I will concentrate on avoiding injury so I can keep this momentum going.
I was soaked with sweat, so had to change shirts. Put on sweats and a light jacket and walked 3.6 miles past USAF Memorial and Pentagon. Very steep hill coming back up. Got rained on (just sprinkling) a little, but worth the effort. I saw a couple of other guys jogging past the Memorial. I figured I could keep going if other were dumb enough to be out on the cold and wet. I meant to walk a full 4 miles, but it gets confusing around the Pentagon, and I didn't want to get jacked up by security, so I just turned around at a shorter point and recalculated the distance on www.Mapmyrun.com. Here it is below. Traffic is a bit much on Columbia Pike, but not a bad walk otherwise.
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