Running a lot more these days

So, I haven't posted much lately, but not for lack of things to write about in general.

One specific thing of note lately is that I've been running a lot more than I have in many years. What's changed? Well, for starters, I got a group of my friends together this year to do the Detroit Marathon in October as a relay team. I told them originally that, because I figured I was the most regular runner of the bunch, I'd volunteer to do the long leg - which was going to be about 7 miles. I've been a regular runner for years but always kind of stuck around the 3-4 miles/run about 3-4 times a week - so I'd normally do about 12-14 miles in any week.

I knew I had to start running more to get ready.

The second major thing that happened this year was that my wonderful wife and kids got me a Nike+! I'd seen ads for it for months and kept mentioning it to my wife and on Father's Day I got not only a Nike+ but also a new Apple iPod Nano to go with it to replace the 2nd generation iPod I'd killed earlier this year!

The Nike+ has had the most significant effect I can imagine on me and my running! It measures and times all of my runs and allows me to see a history of things, look at runs by week, month, etc. It's really a great product that I can't recommend enough to anyone who runs (I wish I knew more people who used one).

In October, I ran the Detroit Marathon Relay - a 7.4 mile leg that my Nike+ measured at about 7.53 miles - and every week since then, I've been doing one "long" run a week of at least 7.5 miles. My longest so far has been an 8.25 mile run a couple weeks back.

I've also been pushing myself to run longer weeks - the week of the Marathon, I ran a total of 20.42 miles and have been increasing each week a bit since, culminating this week in running a total of 24.28 miles (including the 10K I ran yesterday).

I've also added the Nike+ widget to my blog (did that months ago) so it's possible to always see my last five runs if you want.

All is not good, though. In June of this year, just days before I got my Nike+, I injured my knee playing in an outdoor soccer game. I finally got an MRI in September and it turns out I apparently tore a tendon. I still need to have that attended to, but the weird thing is that it doesn't really bother me while I run. Go figure...