Slow and Steady but coming back strong

I know it's been a long time since you heard from me. My journey to recovery has been slow and steady. Steady is the good part, slow has been driving me crazy. My reward for sticking with it was that I got to run for the first time a few weeks ago.
I went to the beach and got to hang out with some of my favorite people. Anyway, John the trainer decided that the beach was a good time to test out running. The catch was I had to run on dry sand barefoot. Do you know how hard that is?
Of course that was part of his evil plan. Make it so difficult that there was no way I could.... In my mind the way the end goes is there is no way I could succeed. In reality it was so I wouldn't go too fast and hurt myself.
Either way I had a ball. It was difficult just trying to keep my footing so there was no way I was going to go fast. Also, I hadn't even tried to run since July '09 and completely suck so I couldn't go too fast or too far. But I was cheesing anyway.
It felt so good to be able to move in that way. I didn't realized how much I missed it until that day. I had blocked that out because it was possible that I might not ever get to the point of running again. I didn't want to think about that or deal with that as a reality so I kind of ignored it.
Of course, I had to take very long walk breaks and wasn't allowed to run for more than 2 minutes stretches. None of the restrictions mattered. For a few minutes, I was a runner once again.
That got me all excited so of course when I got home I asked when could I run again. Unfortunately, John the trainer was having none of that. I wined and told him that he couldn't let me have a taste and then completely take it away from me. He decided to let me walk/run for 30 minutes one day on a soft surface. If I didn't have major issues maybe I could do it again. I choose a park near my house and went out early one morning. I weather was great. It had rained the night before and was coolish that morning (it is summer time in Texas so you are only going to get so cool). My plan was going great until I realized that they paved the trail. Oops, so much for soft surface. I was determined to make this work so I walked on the pavement and ran on the side in the grass and gravel. It worked great although I got some strange looks from the other people out on trail. The pounding was a little harder than the beach but still it was great to be moving. I'm still waiting for the verdict, will I be allowed to run again on a more consistent basis?
Now you are somewhat caught up. I should say that I have been working hard doing the exercises and building my strength with the workouts. I never thought about how far I had come until today.
Today I played tennis. Well Bob and I hit balls for about 45 minutes. The last time I tried to play was before I stopped running last year and it was awful. My stamina was nonexistent and I couldn't move because of my knee.
Today is was beautiful, I was moving and had energy. Now remember I still suck but having a chance to try and run for a ball is so much better than the only way we could keep playing was if he hit the balls right at me. This was a world of improvement.
I didn't realize that even though I haven't been doing the things that I use to do for exercise and I wasn't sweating up a storm, I was still doing great things for my body. Building that base is so important and I has lost track of that.
There is a reason slow and steady wins the race.