So far so good

Second from left, with the University of Melbourne
Cross-Country team in Canberra for the 1979
Intervarsity Championships.

It was with more than a little trepidation that I set off for this morning's 6km walk/run after supervising the 6:00am Trotters' track session at the Terrigal Haven.  I walked the first 500 metres, which included a solid hill, then jogged a few hundred metres before walking up a second, steeper and longer, hill.  So far, so good.  Once at the top, on Scenic Highway overlooking Terrigal, I decided to jog the remaining 4.5 kilometres of the 6 kilometre course if I felt OK.

I was very slow, and felt very unfit.  At one point, I was passed by ultra-running friend, Darren, who was himself running very slowly as he came back from injury.  How slow can you go, and still be running?  My joints creaked and my chronic bad knee hurt, but my breathing remained steady.  All the time, I was examining my heart and chest with my brain, looking for signs that something was amiss, but nothing happened.

When I reached the last few small hills, hills that I had originally intended to walk up, I chose to keep running.  I felt a little reckless, but was gaining confidence, that so long as my breathing was comfortable, I was not stressing my heart.  Back at The Haven, I reached my car and stopped running.  It hadn't been any tougher than other first runs after two months off, and I felt a glimmer of hope that I was on the way back to recreational running, if not competition.