This graph’s stats are ignoring Sunday’s runs. Feel free to ignore it back.

I occasionally participate in challenges on Strava. They had one to run 33 miles in the 10 days over the holidays. I signed up for it, since I knew I was going to be doing a couple long runs in that time, so I thought I could do it. The last day of the challenge was the last day of the year. Going into that day, I was 0.23 miles short of the 33 miles. So, on New Year’s Eve, before I headed out to all the festivities, I ran a third of a mile. And completed the challenge!

The next day I went out on a real run. Jonathan came along and jogged beside me and would not let me walk! I was pretty much begging him to let me walk at several points, but he kept pushing me. I will say that I snuck in a couple walking steps when he wasn’t paying attention (and more than a couple when he was but I had an awful side stitch that I just needed a couple breaths to work out), but for the most part, I ran over 2 miles straight for the first time since October, even pulling out a sprint at the end.

I have no real excuse for the next few days; I was just being lazy. I pushed myself out the door on Sunday for an hour long run before it started raining. It was a nice day (then) in the upper 50s and the sun shining. I started off well, running about the first 1.1 miles without walking. Then I hit a major hill. (Nice time to pick a new route.) I’m talking nearly quarter of a mile, 15-20% grade. No. I walked that thing. And I maintained a heart rate of over 185 bpm just walking up it, so I’m sure I would have exploded trying to run it. After the hill, I started running again, but the road had curved and I was now running against the wind. Did I mention there was some crazy 20 mph wind? Because there was. It was pretty much over after that. I was tired from walking that hill and running into the strong wind was not fun. So I started walking quite a bit.

I ended up doing a little over 4.6 miles, but really only the first mile was any good. And by good, I mean that I got my best time on the 0.6 mile straight segment that started out the run.

After I cooled down a bit, I did a couple 0.1 mile strides in front of my house. I wanted to do more, but, let’s face it, I was impressed that I even did two.

I can’t believe the half marathon is in less than a week. I feel woefully unprepared, but I’m sure it will be fun no matter what. I just hope that I’m able to continue to walk around the parks afterwards.