I've got the itch

The itch to get out and run, that is. I'm glad to say that I haven't lost it after taking another week off to heal. I started back running last week. Took it easy the first day...15 minutes on the elliptical and then 3 minutes walking on the treadmill and 5 minutes running. The second run was 0.1 walking and then 0.9 running, with some changes in speed toward the end. I ran again yesterday with 0.1 walking and 1.0 running, again with changes in speed throughout. I'm feeling good so far and thankful for it. I've finished my workout each time by swimming with the kids. It's time to either start working on strength training with the machines at the YMCA or start back up on the Wii Fit. My running plan is to add between 0.1 and 0.25 each time I run and stabilize at 3 miles for a good while. While I've lost about 23 pounds overall, I put part of that back on and still need to lose about 20 pounds in addition to what I put back on over the course of 2 weeks. In order to do that, I'm going to have to add strength training or some other type of cross-training to my routine. I wonder if racing the kids to pick things up off the floor of the living room would count...