Come up with a journey run. Run across your state, around your county, past places you have lived etc. Fun to plan and even better to accomplish. Pace does not matter.

What's your access to open water swimming like? Could you train up for a long open water event or a solo swim like Catalina?

Two thoughts:

1. Train to complete (not compete) a 10k OWS. It's a long enough event to be a challenge and not be something that is going to spike HR like a 400IM at a masters meet. Given your D1 background, you'll probably end up doing better than most of us AOS anyway.

2. A fondo or 70.3. I know you hate cycling (Zwift has made it better....I promise), but cycling is probably the best way to gain fitness and drop closer to race weight without injury issues. Running high mileage isn't a good option right now, but Z2 cycling is a great way to build back. A 70.3 lets you ramp the running up and dill down the %cycling as you progress.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

A swim run.

I was thinking the same thing. Swim - Run checks many of the boxes the OP wants.

Also, as the OP is working way back into better fitness, doing some epic hikes is another good option for a lower HR, endurance activity. Hours on your feet, with a day pack, at altitude, with some vertical ascent/descent included does wonders for building endurance strength. Along those lines:

• Hike some of the 14ers out in Colorado (typically round trip distance is 6-10 miles with average ascent of 3,000'-4,000' and can take 4-6 hours...less time if you want to push a faster pace, slower if you're keeping the effort easy).
• Hike the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim (25ish miles)

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Tad

It took awhile, but I finally discovered that its not the destination that's important, but rather the journey.

Swim 8.2 miles around Mackinac island in August. Cool water temps, awesome location. Challenging, but not competitive, should be able to keep the HR down in a wetsuit cruising with fins on. Full distance is optional.

https://www.swimaroundmac.com/

Thank you for all the great recommendations. I'm vaguely familiar with most, but have not previously considered pursuing any. Bottom line is this go-around think I will mix it up with a variety of smaller challenges, starting with Swim Run in Knoxville late June. Don't know squat about Swim-Run besides what I have read on this forum, but that one appeals because it gives me time to get in semi-decent shape and it looks like a swim-run wetsuit is not needed. I have never swam in a wetsuit, I remember being virtually the only participant in Panama 70.3 w/o one in 2012ish, regretted while swimming through masses of seaweed, while I normally coasted IM swims at 70%, I sprinted all out to get through that stuff.

Consolidated List:

• Run Journey - I like this idea, will start small / very local.
• Open Water Swim - Plenty of pools and OWS options (freshwater lake) in the area. I prefer to mainly train in pools but can always find an OWS group to join on weekends. Not the same as saltwater swimming, but am comfortable with either. I like the destination idea as I would be there to enjoy it.
• Fondo - longer term
• Swim Run - didn't realize it was still such a niche sport, but looks exactly like what I am looking for.
• Hiking - Have actually never done much true hiking, while not like out West there are many options nearby with Blue Ridge Parkway. Going to schedule a short hike soon.

P.S. - Slowtwitch is almost too nice these days, 10 years ago there would have been multiple replies to man up and go do an Ultra in Siberia.