tick, tick, tick

I discovered today that my cell phone, which acts as a watch so I can keep a pretty close gauge of my running time, has a stopwatch. The next time I run, which will hopefully be Thursday or Friday, I plan on using it.

According to the time on my cell phone (before I discovered the stopwatch), it took me about 10 minutes to run up the street and just about nine to run down the same street yesterday. Actually, it was probably a little under nine; I had to stop to tie my shoe as I was practically careening down the ending hill.

I would love to do that two-mile jaunt in 18 minutes; actually, 17 would make me feel really good. But considering it is still cold around here (about 28 at most when I ran on Monday), I am not beating myself up about it too much. Plus, I have to wonder if it is counterproductive that my run always begins up a hill, and a tough one at that. When you start out winded, it is hard to pick up steam.

But I also wonder if I should start increasing my distance, rather than worrying about how long it takes me to run my usual two miles. The fear of biting off more than I can chew keeps me from running any farther. After all, I have had relatively little pain in the last month, and I have not run much more than two miles at a time, most weeks only one time. Last year, I would run close to three miles during some of my runs, and I would often run on consecutive days.

I guess I just hate to mess with a (pretty) good thing.