(That’s me, laughing smugly.)

I’ve just come from my run. I ran for almost 1 hour (not counting warmup and cooldown), which is in itself enough for me to be very happy and smug and proud of myself. I also ran the same route that messed up my knee last year – I went too far too fast and my not 100% healthy knee staged a passionate protest (ie. I couldn’t walk properly for days and it hurt for weeks).

This time, I took the route on in a leisurely 8:12 pace (7.3 km/h) and I did it after months of regular running. I was aiming for 60 minutes of running and certainly wasn’t planning to run the whole route. But as it happened, my 60 minutes coincided nicely with the route. In contrast to the last year’s experience, I came home like after any normal run: a bit tired, a bit sweaty, my heart beating a bit faster and my knee hurting just a bit. Certainly not in pain and ready to die, like last year.

The point of all this… I’m not only trying to run harder, better, faster (_{“stronger” is here only because of the song and doesn’t really apply ;)}), but also smarter. So far, so good. :)