Yeah For A Healed Injury!

I just did my first run yesterday after almost 6 full weeks off. I say almost because there was one 30 minute run two weeks ago when I realized I needed a little more time to heal fully. I'm still not sure what I did to myself as I never coughed up the money to have it checked by a doctor. I simply treated it as worst case scenario and fortunately, it appears to be all better! Whoo hoo! I was a little worried with how my cardio survived during the downtime but it seems to be okay - not what it was but not as bad as it could be. I took it easy using a 3:1 run/walk ratio. This wasn't easy! I wanted to just keep running and cardio wise I felt like I could keep running. However, the last thing I wanted to do was risk re-injury so I let wisdom prevail and forced myself to stop and walk every 3 minutes. Well, until the last bit of the run. It seemed silly to stop and walk only two minutes away from the end of my run. But then it seemed silly to stop just shy of 3.5 miles. Anyway, I wound up running 8 minutes straight. I blame the poor judgement on endorphins. The good news ... the 8 minutes of straight running wasn't hard. Yeah for keeping some cardio up. Other good news ... I could feel a surge of energy coming on and knew I was just getting into a groove. I felt like I could have easily pulled out a 10K. Whew! No, it's not 26.2 miles or even 13.1 and yes, I still walked a lot but I'll take it. The other good news is there was no pain while running and no pain later. I'll take today off of running and cross-train and try another easy run tomorrow. Here soon I need to get my 10 year old daughter outside and running as we gear up for the Iron Girl 5K. It's September 12th and we haven't trained at all. I think she'll be fine as she's done some pretty difficult hikes in the 5-6 mile range but still, for confidence sake, it would be good to get her out running at least a couple times. I am so glad I'll be able to run it with her. I had feared I was going to be stuck walking it while she ran on ahead (which she was all set to do). The weather is supposed to begin cooling down by this weekend so we may have some good outdoor running weather next week. And hopefully, this 5K will be the kick start I need to a good running season this fall and into spring. I had hoped for 26.2 in November at the Seattle Marathon but now am thinking it may just be the half. Looks like my 2nd marathon will take place in the spring.
Meanwhile, I am just so happy to be running again! I don't care if it was on my treadmill, in my super hot house with fans blowing on me and the kitty box stinking in the next room (heat and litter boxes don't mix). I was running, my endorphins were kicking in and I felt great!