Taking It Easy

Opie napping on my jogging shoe

I have decided not to keep increasing the distance for my long runs for awhile.  Pain set in when I ran over ll miles.  And, my goal is to be pain free.  Last week I was scheduled to do a long run and I kept it under nine miles.  I felt great.  I ran 1 min run and 30 second walk the whole way.  This change was hard to get used to (versus the 3:30 run 30 sec walk I was doing).  But Jeff Galloway suggested that my pain was due to running too fast.  He was right, slowing down helped with the pain.  I was not trying to run fast before, it felt natural to me, but obviously my joints could not handle it.  This week, I ran every other day about 45 minutes each time and ran one slightly longer run at 52 minutes.  I am in a lot less pain than I was a few weeks ago. My pain is all on my right side in my quad and IT band. On my days off running, I am walking more.  We just got a new dog, Opie who is helping motivate me to walk!  As you can tell from the picture, he is not a big runner.