Getting in it

So I've been having a hard time getting into a running routine for a while now. I'll run several days one week, zero the next.

I realized not so long ago that for quite some time, at least 7 years, I ran every day at 4 pm. I knew someone else who did the same thing, and mostly for the same reason: cross country practice. I coached and taught for those seven years (and taught for 11 more, total of 18 years), and ran from school or with the cross country team. The habit became, well, habitual, and without that schedule, I've floundered some.

The other day it was raining real hard, and my neighbor called to ask me to go running, ten miles, on a nearby trail. I jumped right on it, though I hadn't run ten miles in a week for three or four weeks. We had a nice easy run in the mud and rain.

The next day, rainy and cold, I took our dog Bristol to an in-town trail less than a mile from home. Slow from the day before, and with Bristol off the leash from the start, we trotted along in the drizzle, warming up gradulaly through the 1/2 hour run.

It's the weather I want, I think. It's being outside, exposed to the elements, that keeps me running. I don't like a treadmill, and don't belong to a gym, because I don't like exercising indoors. I just need to be in the outdoors.