Well getting my daughter started running helped motivate me.
I started running every day. Or, nearly every day.
In early August we found a local forest preserve with dirt trails and it brought back memories of running the trails in Illinois as a teenager. There's something hypnotic about running trails. You have to concentrate on where you put each foot fall and before you know it you've run 20 minutes, and then 35 and then 50. Who needs music? I had struggled getting the benefits of running with music. My brain could never really use the music to let the minutes and miles fly by. But the trails, they were magic.
I was running more and more by myself, and more and more slowly. But I was going farther. I was running for 45 minutes, then 50, then 60, then 6 miles and 7 miles and 85 minutes. Super slow.
I was reading more about running. I read Long Slow Distance for the first time at just the right time and it reinforced my current program of just slogging out miles but with the knowledge, or faith, that I was going to get faster, eventually. And I did ... eventually.
Finally, just about 6 weeks ago I ran 9.5 miles - out my door and around a different lake and back. It wasn't quite non-stop. It actually took about 2 hours by the clock. But I ran the whole distance - choosing to not walk when I stopped running.
Another week and I ran the 9.5 with a single stop in about 95 minutes.
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