My marathon days are officially over. Unlike most, I am not having to quit because of back or knee problems. I am giving it up because I do not see health benefits of long distance training. I do see the wear on my body in the form of sore joints, sun burn, and not so pretty feet. I have found that running much faster for a shorter amount of time is much more beneficial than the long runs. I offer my size 2 figure as evidence of this. Not only do my pants fit, but they fit loosely in the front. The increased running pace along with a huge cut-back on wine seems to do great things for my waistline.
The first two weeks of getting back to running were brutal. I hurt all over from the surgery, and I was carrying an extra 10 pounds. Now, I am down 12 pounds, which seems to have almost entirely come off my waste line, and I am really enjoying my runs. I look more forward to my run each day than I do my dinner, and it is no secret that I love to eat. I wouldn’t be who I am if I wasn’t competitive, namely with myself. When I first started back, I sat down one day and took a look at all of my personal bests, and I frowned. I used a running app on my phone (Endomondo), which I highly recommend. One of my favorite things is all of the statistics that it provides. Here are my personal bests, since I started using the app in June of 2014:
4/24/15 12 minutes 1.53 miles
2/28/16 1 hour 6.84 miles
9/02/15 1 kilometer 5 minutes 30 seconds
4/24/15 3 kilometers 15 minutes 8 seconds
2/08/15 5 kilometers 26 minutes 21 seconds
2/28/16 10 kilometers 54 minutes 22 seconds
3/12/16 1 miles 7 minutes 28 seconds
2/08/15 3 miles 25 minutes 25 seconds
Most of my personal bests are nearly a year old. An unhealthy lifestyle brought on by a poor sense of self thanks to an unhealthy relationship withy guy next door, followed by a health scare and surgery definitely all set me back. But now, I have my healthy lifestyle back, and I am getting in a little better shape everyday. My goal is to make two updates to every one of the personal bests above in 2016. We will see how that goes 
8/9/2016