Miles After Fifty

 When I first started running, I didn’t even know what Zone 2 was. I just thought running was exercise, and if I was going to exercise, I should put in some effort.

 My heel never hurt badly enough to make me stop running. I could still walk normally, and I could still run. Most mornings I’d feel some stiffness in my right heel for the first few steps, but once I got moving it usually felt manageable. Because it wasn’t very painful, I didn’t think much of it at first. I just figured it would eventually go away. I was paying more attention to whether I could run than to how my heel was actually responding to the training.

 When I first started running regularly, I thought getting better at running meant one thing: running faster. It seemed logical. If I could run the same distance faster than before, I must be getting better at running. And if I wanted to improve my cardiovascular fitness, I thought I needed to push myself. So that’s what I did.

I didn’t start running because I wanted to become a runner.