My Break from Beijing

I stopped running for nearly two years. At first, I took time off to focus on moving to China and getting the family settled in. But the real reason was just laziness. Like any bad habit, not running became normal and I succumbed to excuses, like blaming the pollution outside for my lack of initiative. The irony is that the air quality here has actually been pretty decent. In March, sick of my sedentary state, I felt inspired and bought a treadmill. I've run most of my life, so I (very wrongly) assumed getting back into it would be easy. There's a reason the expression, "Just like running again," doesn't exist. It was really, really tough, on par with I'm-not-sure-I-can-do-this tough, which you can seen in my sporadic running schedule. Doubts swirled in my head: Is it because I'm getting older? Are my running days behind me? Are humans even designed to run at all? There was a large temptation to quit my original goal. I struggled to run two miles without walking - what hope is there to run a 5K under 20 minutes? Plus, I'm convinced the technicians that delivered my treadmill installed it on a permanent incline.

I started to run in earnest in late May, during a month-long break in New York. But like my original foray with the treadmill, the beginning was really slow going - I didn't even bother recording my time, since I didn't want to embarrass myself. And it was a struggle, largely because I had only run on average about once every 10 days since I restarting in March. By my third attempt, running was still difficult, but within reason, like my body finally decided to cut a deal with me: I don't push it too much, and it won't take revenge on me. Given my improved consistency these last several weeks, it looks like my body and I are finally getting along:

March 13: Two miles in 15:43

March 16: Three miles leisurely

March 24: Three miles (8:52, 8:00, 8:21)

April 20: Three miles (9:15, 9:09, 9:09)

April 25: Two miles in 15:30

May 2: Two miles in 15:39 (7:48, 7:41)

May 4: Three miles in 24:11 (8:33, 7:57, 7:41)

May 26: Three miles leisurely

May 31: Three miles leisurely

June 4: Three miles in roughly 25:30

June 7: Three miles in roughly 25:00

June 9: Three miles in just under 25:00

June 11: Three miles in roughly 24:30

June 18: Three miles leisurely

June 21: Three miles leisurely

June 23: 1 mile warm up, 4 x 200 m pick ups, 200 m recovery jog, 1 mile cool down

June 25: Three miles leisurely

June 29: Four miles leisurely

July 3: Three miles in 22:25 (7:45, 7:25, 7:15)

July 7: Three miles leisurely

July 9: Three miles in 23:03

July 11: Three miles in 21:55 (7:22, 7:20, 7:13)

July 14: Three miles in 21:58 (7:20, 7:19, 7:19)

July 16: Four miles in 30:42

July 18: Three miles in 22:20 (7:36, 7:30, 7:14)

July 21: Four miles: 1 mile (7:59), 3 x 800 m (3:26, 3:19, 3:12), 800 m recovery jogs

July 23: Three miles in 22:58

July 25: Three miles in 22:11

July 28: Four miles in 29:33

July 30: Three miles in 22:56