The Run After The Sickness

So I had to take a bit of an illness break.  Me & the kids all had some sort of wicked upper respiratory infection thingie, which for me triggers my asthma.  If I were to even try to run before my lungs were healed I would have gone into a full blown attack, and nobody wants that.  The first two weeks were because of illness 100%, this past week was schedule crazy - kids with half days, doctor appointments, madness.  I have to be better about leaving time for me to get runs in, so that's something I still need work on.

But for today's run I decided to take the advice of an article I read about how training too hard/fast might not be doing me any favors.  In the past, my average run speed on the treadmill was between a 5.5-7.0, depending on how ambitious I was feeling.  But I'm not there now, and I keep forgetting that.  This article said that for regular maintenance runs (which is all I'm doing because I'm not a real runner, I don't do long distances) I should be able to talk while running.  I should not be horribly out of breath or gasping for air, that the run should be rather easy on me and to save the hard stuff for speed training.  Apparently I wasn't doing this right.  All of my runs were leaving me completely out of breath & they were a struggle so today I decided to pull waaayyy back.  Even though my first few runs out there were already pulled back for my running norm, I pulled even further back.

Today I started at a 4.  That used to be a walking pace for me.  It's not anymore and that is sad, but I have to build up to that.  So I started at a 4 and actually felt really good about it.  I was able to breathe but I still felt like I was getting the exercise I need, sweat dripping, etc.  This was a straight out of bed morning run.  Like, I literally opened my eyes, drank some water and then headed down to the basement.  Didn't put on any running gear other than sneakers and ran in my PJ's.  Because I'm hardcore like that.  And after a bit of running at a 4 and waking up I increased to 4.2, 4.5, and then 5.  If you've been following along since the very beginning you know I like to end almost all of my runs with a quick dash and today was no exception.  I did the last 0.2 miles on 5.5.

I felt pretty good at the end - slightly winded from the final sprint, but I didn't feel defeated, which is how it has been.  I DO NOT like how long one simple mile took, but it wasn't agonizing.  My final time for 1 mile was 14:02.  Almost embarrassing - I think I ran my first ever mile much more quickly, but I guess I have to learn that I can't compare.

I hate that I fall off the running wagon so frequently so I'm going to try to be better - it's just really, really hard with the kids & their schedule but it is something I have to do.  So I turn to you - how do you stay on track?  What tools do you use to keep at it?