Way to go, all!
Southern Man:
You will indeed get where you want to go. My own return to racing after 19 years as an indifferent jogging began with a 10K exactly three years ago. I'd trained since December. I ran 47:10. Nineteen years earlier I'd run 35:50. I simply could not believe a) that I'd lost so much, and b) that running that slowly could hurt as badly as it did.
My next 10K, a month later, was 48:13, a meltdown. Now I was REALLY puzzled.
By that October I'd lowered it to 43:35, but was still puzzled.
dtoce and others at coolrunning who'd done the return-to-running thing assured me that it would come down further.
A year later I lowered it to 41:35.
In March 2005 I lowered it, on a very flat fast course, to 41:09.
Now, May 2006, I'm down to 40:48.
On the one hand, I supposed I should see the writing on the wall and realize that sub-40 just may not happen.
On the other hand, I'm even more intrigued now than I was three years ago. I've lowered my 5K from 22:05 to 19:30 in three years. I'm finally beginning to figure out how to train hard without breaking down. I'm curious about what will happen if I boost mileage, run easier, perhaps average 55-60 for a couple of months. I've averaged 45 mpw for 2-3 months, but more than that seems like unexplored territory. (I ran that much in my early 20s, averaged as much as 65 mpw, ran a 2:53 marathon off that.)
Non-runners probably can't understand how tantalizing it is to wonder what's around the next corner. It's that feeling of "I keep on feeling if I just get everything right, I'll do _______." That's what keeps me going.
Here's the truth: the further I travel down the comeback road, the more I begin to learn the subtleties of training and racing, the LESS agonizing the races become. I've spent more time in training running race pace intervals and above; I've made myself unafraid of anaerobic pain--which is not to say it doesn't still hurt, but it doesn't come as a disillusioning shock, the way it used to when, relatively untrained and having forgotten all my race instincts, I'd attack hills hard during races and end up at HR max, gasping, hurting, confused. Now I know how to take what modest conditioning I actually have and deploy it intelligently.
You'll certainly bring your times down. Give it time, though. Have a long range plan. Especially early on, it's better to do slightly too little than slightly too much. I did slightly too much and didn't run for three months due to a tibial stress fracture. Less is more, until those bones have re-hardened.
