I spent 2015 developing what I don’t think I’ve ever truly had before: a training base. Dailymile kindly sent me this summary of my walking + running mileage for each month, starting in January when I walked two miles a day and ending in December, when I did three runs each week (7, 4, and 3 miles) and walked three miles on each non-running day:

(I was sick in November and didn’t feel like trying to catch up, what with Thanksgiving and all.)

I called a lot of December fingernail mileage, as in I barely clawed my way through it each day. Once I spent an hour walking through hallways at the university because it was raining and I needed to stay dry for an office party. Once I got dressed for my long run as soon as I got up on my day off, and still never dragged myself out to do it, and then had to rearrange the rest of the week to make it up. I thought I would probably quit or take a break in January. But it felt wrong not to walk on January 1st… and run on the 2nd and 3rd… and I’m still going.

I am proud of this, after so long being perpetually undertrained for races, so much starting and stopping with running. But I don’t really know what I want to do with it.

Walking is easy. It makes me happy, gets me out in the daylight, and often I can do it with Sanguinity. I’ve been hankering to go hike at Silver Falls pretty soon, because we haven’t been there for years, but even our one-mile walks to the library and my commute miles have an obvious payoff in how I feel.

I would not say I’ve been enjoying running, particularly. Every single time it’s hard to get out there, and I’m glad when I’m done. Is it the cold and the rain? Is it that generalized “resistance” that doesn’t mean much of anything? It is hard to tell.

I would be happy to drop any individual run, but not running in general, apparently. When I have dropped running, pretty soon I started dreaming about it.

I don’t really care if I get faster, and going longer doesn’t appeal to me much either– more time away from home and all the other stuff I love to do. Races aren’t appealing to me right now. I guess I’ll keep this baseline for a few more months and see if spring and summer feel different.

And keep inching up the walking, because I love to walk outdoors and look at trees, and it’s fun to see the bar graph grow. And it injury-proofs me for the running.

My next run has built-in motivation: I got new shoes this month!

Aren’t they the prettiest? I keep making Sanguinity admire them.