from Walk to Run

It's been a busy week on many fronts.

Out of interest I totted up the distances I walked every day for this past week. The walking is incidental to my work and done at about 13 minutes/mile pace. I usually walk about 1 mile at a time.

Daily Totals

• Monday: 4
• Tuesday: 4
• Wednesday: 4
• Thursday: 1.5
• Friday: 4
• Saturday: 2

Total: 19.5 miles

I've been doing this for the past couple of weeks now (not that I make any special effort) and this morning I decided to see what effect it would have on my running. Over-ambitious, I wanted to do 5 miles of running, but had to settle for less. The effort was noticeably harder - I knew that after about 15 minutes or so my brain, recently unaccustomed to sustaining effort for beyond that time, would start to think "What on earth?" and "Why?", but eventually I did 4.1 miles at 7:54 pace. I know 7:54 is only average (below average for some!) but it's something I am satisfied about and can live with. To achieve the same result,

Last year
Time set aside for running: about 2 hours each week
Miles run: 10 - 15 miles each week

This year
Time set aside for running: 0
Miles run: 0 (ok, maybe 0.5, sometimes I leave work late and end up having to dash)

So I've put in just about nothing into running, and have achieved just about the same results, which leaves me to choose one of the following:

a) Sloth is okay; or
b) "Just imagine what results you would get if you did actually run!"; or
c) "Start running before you descend into the pit of 9-minute miles!"; or
d) "4 miles? Sissy."

Help me decide?