THE SLOW ROAD...

URG takes the slow road to China.

Note: When I first wrote this I really felt that the hiking I was doing daily didn't count as a workout as I wasn't logging my time or distance and I wasn't following any kind of plan. Since then my feelings about my hiking has changed although for some reason I still find it difficult to keep weight off without the speed workouts. 
I stopped running many months ago. I suppose I asked myself at some point, "What's the point?" I had found some new hobbies and wasn't much interested in running fast just for the sake of it. So I went along without running for days, then weeks and now months.

I have to say that I can hardly recognize myself and it's not just the extra few pounds that have changed me. I felt it was a good change at first. No thinking incessantly about running and training and everything that goes along with it. I rode the running merry-go-round for 7 years and then one day I hopped off. What a relief, if I could push back the idea of the "un-conditioning"(loss of speed) that was surely going on. But that wasn't motivation enough. There is something great to be said about NOT HAVING TO RUN!

But alas the lure of the running around in circles is still there, with every running shoe store I pass and every time I think back to a race long past. I'm slowly beginning to remember. I remember the feelings I experienced and it is those which call me back. Not the places or the people or anything else. It's the feelings that go along with all of that which is attracting me again. So what else can I say except that I "feel" like running again.
Note: I did run a 5km back in September on a whim pretty much just to see what would happen and although I was slow I realized that I haven't lost as much as I thought I had and the most important thing was that I still knew how to pace myself.