First Run of 2006

Once the summer months arrive I love to play pick-up soccer at work. It requires a great deal of both distance running and sprinting. Unfortunately, I just cannot drag myself outdoors to do road work in the winter. Essentially, I generally dislike running outdoors and lack the gusto to be like Brook and run in the deep cold. It seems like everyone at work is suddenly a distance runner (six people) or a distance cyclist (10 people). So, I finally dragged myself to South Portland's indoor track to begin the process of teaching my legs and lungs what it means to run again. The news is just terrible.

I managed to walk one mile, run 1/3 of a mile and four sprints for 1/6 of a mile over a period of 30 minutes. I was hoping to do better...a lot better. At least I have a baseline now for how horribly out of shape I am. I plan to start "running" twice a week. I hope to get to a much higher level of fitness by May when we start playing soccer. The workout I would like to be doing by May is 3 miles or so with 2/3 running broken up by 1/3 of the distance in sprints. If I am going to catch up to the other folks on the field, my sprint speed had better rise.