Back in the saddle 2.0?

So much to sum up: well, I never did run from work but did plenty of walks.

Coronavirus might exempt me from my last weird-hour rotation too, we'll see...meanwhile, I've taken up the sport of backyard running (and will have to lay down some grass seed if/when it rains tomorrow because I've worn a track and this is a rental....).

Anyway, because I'm jogging ~100 metre loops on a combo of suffering/dead grass, deer poop, these weird berries that I don't recognize, and this weird slime/mold plant that I don't recognize either, and mainly because I'm somewhat out of shape and slightly too heavy for peak performance, I'm slow. Plus, I'm not into breathing even remotely moderately hard these days because I'm still getting used to having "seasonal" allergies all the time, which puts that nomenclature in question--well, point is, I'm extra slow.

However, I've been enjoying being in the zone, perhaps for the first time in years. My dog isn't into running past a few miles usually, and since it takes about that long to get the endorphins going, it just hasn't been happening.

I didn't expect it to happen in my backyard, either.

Backstory, I don't actually have a backyard at my primary residence, but the day after I was told "What are you guys doing here? We don't have enough masks," I loaded up the car with the kid and the dog, and drove 2.5ish hours to my husband's house, which does have a backyard. For the first week or so, I ran on the streets, but because this is the suburbs, it kind of got old quickly  After the second week, it became clear that I wasn't going to be going back any time soon, so I made a track.

Running that thing sucked at first. There is a tiny slope, magnified by my deconditioning--in the beginning, I was like, ok, I ran 3 loops and need 7 more to make a km???!?!! YUCK

And then something clicked. I remembered the little I remembered of Maffetone training--keep that HR under control--and that was enough to give my laziness carte blanche. If I had to walk up the ridiculously minuscule slope, so be it.  Whatever.

Well, after 2-3 more weeks of this, I actually wound up doing a tempo effort for about a half hour, I think. We hiked in the morning, almost 10K, and then I decided to do one last "long run" on the old track before I reseed it and kill more grass elsewhere in the yard.

I was optimistic:  yeah, 10 miles, double digits! My longest run to date has been about 8 miles, so that seemed doable.

Spoiler alert, I increased my PB by about 0.2 miles--but, after 50 minutes of feeling like crap, the lamb curry and coffee I had for lunch kicked in, and I started pushing the pace and breathing harder, like an easy 2:2. My mental game turned ON, I was counting loops in 8 loop chunks, and I wasn't feeling the desperation of so much more--I got comfortable with the discomfort.

Honestly, I probably could've gone longer, and my original plan was to do 2 hours easy pace, but my phone got down to 4%. Maybe that's what inspired me to pick up the pace? Because there's nothing worse than escaped data.