I'm slowly working up a running base again after nearly a year of almost no running at all. Before I can start the training program I want to do, I need to be able to do a long run of eight miles. I'm afraid of hurting my knees by increasing the distance too much, too fast. That happened when I started running again after coming back from Morocco. I'm trying to prevent that by not increasing my distance more than 10% a week. I'm also babying my knees by running really slowly to get started. A couple of weeks ago, I covered up the speed on the treadmill display and adjusted it until I thought I had a pace I could keep up for a long run. When I looked at the display, I found I had set it at 3.3 miles per hour. That's an eighteen minute mile! First of all, I didn't know I could actually run that slowly. Secondly, at that pace, a marathon would take about eight hours.
Fortunately, I've been able to progress some since then. This past week I had 4 runs: 2.5, 4.6, 3.8, and a long run of 7 miles. I'm run/walking my long run and averaged 13 min miles that included my warm up and cool down. I'm hoping to ease into my first eight mile long run next weekend.