On the night of the first significantly hot day of the year up here in the high desert, I took a small step forward in my training by running a 9:00 mile. It reached a high of almost 100 degrees today, and by 8:30 pm (when I went on my run) it had cooled down only slightly. However, it was pleasant conditions to run in. I didn't really do anything differently tonight. I simply tried to stick to a steady pace, and I tried to boost my kick. It resulted in a 9 flat, which is my best time since picking up running again about 2 weeks ago (I ran a 9:04 exactly one week ago).
I know I'm making extremely slow progress, but I'm paying for taking so many years off. Even when I would have periods of dedicated running, I would never keep track of my times the way I'm doing now. I'm hoping that by doing it this way (as painful as it is to say I ran a 9 minute mile), I can more strategically train. I desperately want to get my mile time into the 8's, and then the 7's and so on. But I'm still at stage 1: conditioning. I still am huffing and puffing way too much for my liking. I'm hoping it will only take a couple more weeks of running to see improvement here.
One negative about tonight is I began feeling a slight pain in my left knee. I'm hoping it's just a beginning running ache. The last thing I need is my knees to go out. I know on the last big hike I took, my knees were killing by the end. It's a worry I have, that at my age something is going to give out. I just have to train smart and go easy when I need to. That said, I'm hoping to get in a longer run tomorrow; hopefully at Horseman's Center Park.
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