…with my friend Andrea and by some fluke of weird got 1st place for my age group. Don’t get excited, I was running slowly. They must not have had other folks my age, or not many of them at least.

See a few photos of us here.

Today marks the start of my training for a half marathon. Again, stay calm. I run so slow it’s almost more like schlumping.

Woop. Yesterday after work I ran the first 10k of my life. It was the longest continuous recorded run I’ve ever done. Granted, I run slowly. It took an hour. But I humpin’ did it. Plus Mr. Pencil was there to meet me at the end and run the last mile or so with me. He brought the dog but she couldn’t hack it, so he tied her to a piling on a dock that was part of the route. Some do-gooder passerby biker saw her there and called the Humane Society, thinking she’d been abandoned.

Next stop: Half marathon. Bring it!

I started a 13-week training program on January 1st of this year. At that point, I could barely run a single minute without puffing like a buffalo and nearly crying for the effort. Now I can, apparently, run 6.2 miles without pain. Not even sore or rough today.

Confession: I actually kind of totally hate running.

Several years ago I “dealt” with that and ran consistently for about 18 months. Finally, after a couple of really unpleasant foot injuries, I called it quits.

My problems with running are numerous. First, even when consciously thinking about it, I have an elemental problem with pace. I find that without constant attention, I run as fast as I can at any given moment. That means, in the past, I have always been out of breath or near it all the time. Second, I think I may be congenitally kind of bad at it. Second, part II, I have foot problems which turn into ankle and knee problems (I have stupidly high arches; kind of cute, I suppose, in normal life, but painful under high impact).

But perhaps the biggest hurdle is that I never want to admit exactly how out of shape I really am when getting back into trying to run again. I always compare myself to people like my husband, who can get up after not running for a year and run a 5k just like that. So I just force myself to run full-steam until I’m miserable and deadly exhausted.

Two wonderful things have come into my life that have made running not only possible, not only something I feel I need to do, but, gasp, enjoyable. I actually have thoughts like “I want to go home and go for a run now.” They are:

1) The iPod+Nike adapter kit hoo-hah. Knowing that I’m running a 7:40 mile when totally out of shape makes me slow down because I know I can’t maintain it. The constant feedback from this thing lets me know when I’m getting out of line. Plus I can listen to music. Plus I have charts and graphs and other motivational things online. It’s great.

2) The couch - 10k 13-week running plan (you can see a version of it here). This is big. It focuses on combinations of running and walking, building you up slowly. Admitting that I need to walk during runs is hard for me. But this is working. I’m nearly done with week 5 and the improvement is pretty incredible. Not once during any of the runs have I felt like killing myself. To top it off, I haven’t gotten sore or uncomfortable once, save for some intermittent knee problems I mentioned a few posts ago. But icing the knee when it’s tender and running more carefully (not putting too much strain on that joint there) has helped immensely.

So there you have it. It’s the last day of January, and looking back at the month I feel pretty happy with it.

Oh, hell no. After my run last night the inside edge of my left knee was sore, and in the next few hours it got worse such that it really hurts to go up and down hills or stairs, or get up from sitting. Sleeping was really sore when I moved my knee after it had been sitting there for a long time. There’s lots of cracking. Walking on a flat surface is still fine, though.

It sounds like, more likely than not, I’ve managed to get runner’s knee. This could be relatively benign or the end of my short running career depending on whose advice I take.

CoolRunning’s remedy for this is basically ice and chilling out the workout and hill intensity.

But Time-to-Run advocates taking several weeks off.

That would seriously suck. I’m in the middle of a couch-10k program and have a goal of running a 10k in a few months. Help here. Runners? Advice? Sad.

p.s. I pronate HARD. I’ve got good arch support but I might need to look at orthotics.