Fitness Mounting

This winter a "ticker" was added to my blog so I can see exactly how many days, hours, minutes and seconds until my first race. I thought it would be fun to keep track and now I find it intimidating. With a month and five days 'til kickoff, I am working towards improving my fitness without injury. Well, you already know about the mallet finger but I don't count that. The key is to improve fitness gradually, challenge myself with increased speed and duration during my workouts and not do any lingering damage. It's a critical time of year, especially for a 47 year old body. There is this imaginary line that defines the correct amount of training and over-training. So far so good but I was walking the line yesterday. We FINALLY had a day over 40 degrees and the sun was warm on my face. The streets are clear of ice and I went for a long run. Even though my lungs and my legs said, "go further," my brain told me to halt at seven miles. It's all about the balance. Now off to the pool.