shaping up is hard to do

So it's that time of year.

The time of year when you start to realize how little you've done since last fall. When you realize that you have become sadly out of shape, and dammit, you're ready to do something about it.

About 10 days ago, I decided I was going to reverse the getting out of shape trend that had persevered all winter. I decided I was going to try to get in shape for the Blue Nose Half Marathon. (The website for the event has the witty(?) line "the thrill of victory and the agony of the feet".) But is that enough? Nooooo. I have also decided to sign of for the E2C, and another 4-hour orienteering event shortly before it...

Okay, I say to myself, maybe I should get in shape so I can do these things.

So I wrote a note to a friend of mine (who is ridiculously in shape) to see if he would go for a couple of runs with me and basically drag me around the blog a few times. His response was something along the lines of, "I'd love to go on some runs with you, but I must warn you that I'm not really in shape right now and doubt I could run the half in under 1:30."

Well, that's a relief, since doing that last year would have put him in the top 15 finishers, and I'm not quite at that level. At least not yet... I almost hit that time once, and I still partially blame poorly marked miles for missing it, but I don't know if I'm going to go for such a laudable goal this time. I don't want to set that as a goal this year, especially since Halifax will offer a hillier course, but I kind of know myself, so who am I kidding? If I decide to do this, I'm going to want to hit that goal. He knows this.

So last week I went for my first run, since ... probably September. It was slow, with lots of stops. I probably ended up covering about 7 km. To my surprise, I was stopping due to flares up pain from an injury I incurred in 1999. But I survived, without aggrevating the old injury. (Knock on wood.)

This week was less slow, and I (barely) covered 10 km.

The first 4 km were only 3 minutes slower than the pace I'd need to maintain if I wanted to do the half in 1:30. And that's less than 20% the distance to the finish line. Then I slowed down, and probably ran the remaining 6 km in about 35 minutes. And today I can barely walk without looking funny. So I have my work cut out for me.

I think I'll just keep my goal at "don't get hurt" for a while more.