Today was the day I finally started my road back to jogging regularly. Which is somewhat ironic, given that I don’t jog on roads.
Instead Jeff took me up to the zany looking track at Mercer Stadium (pictured below courtesy Google Maps, as I lack a blimp with which to fly over the track to take my own photos).
After four months to nurse my right Achilles tendon back to health my goal tonight was simple: don’t break anything and complete a couple of 400 m laps to calibrate my new iPod nano.
Some observations:
- It felt great to be running again.
- The actual running felt like agony, with my lungs on fire after a piddly 400 m lap.
- I defeated the entire purpose of the run by screwing up the calibration at the end. I had set the distance to 0.8 km (two laps) and at the end of the run when it pulled up what it thought I’d run vs. what I’d really run, I adjusted it to 0.40 km, exactly half the intended total. I couldn’t bear the thought of running again to fix it so it will have to wait until the next time, probably in a few days. My real pace was around 4:20/km, which is remarkably good for a four month layoff (and probably explains the lungs of fire, too).
- The problematic right foot did not hurt, though I could feel where it had been hurt. Ominous sign? Perhaps. The good news is it feels perfectly fine now.
- No more clickwheel. Woo!
Here’s hoping that the next run goes smoothly, that I calibrate my iPod properly and that the properly-calibrated data uploads to the Nike+ site without blowing everything up.
