A few months ago, I started these running programs. The first was entitled ‘3 Weeks to a 30 Minute Running Habit‘. Okay so it took me 6 weeks and one knee injury to finish. But still. I was so inspired by my ability to run without dying of a heart attack, I decided to start ‘8 Weeks to Train for Your First 5K‘. Yesterday I started week 3. I have to brag about this. I’m pretty proud of myself. I am not a runner. I don’t have a runner’s body. I’m 5 feet tall and have short legs. So I never thought I could be one of those people who runs. But I really like it. Here are the best things about running:
- I get out of work about one hour earlier. Seriously, I would do anything to get away from my job for any small amount of time. My co-worker is running with me. She got our boss to agree to shorter lunches in exchange for running in the afternoon in the workout room in the building. You can get most anything out of him if you talk about running. He is one of those people who has ran his whole life. Once he told us that before he got married and had kids, sometimes he would just run all afternoon “for fun.” I know. This is insanity. But anyway back to my point. Now instead of staring at the computer, I get to do my run and watch movies on my iPod (this week was the Lifetime original movie, “Carolina Moon”. Judge accordingly).
- I now eat nonstop. After running, I am so famished. I come home, walk and feed Sadie the dog, then fix myself dinner. Then I eat dessert. Then perhaps a snack. Then maybe a handful of M&Ms. You get the idea. Somehow I am losing weight. It is like a miracle. I’ve spent the past 15 years trying to convince myself that sitting on my behind on the couch was totally going to take off the poundage. Not that I suffer from an eating disorder and think I’m obese, I don’t, I just suffer from the terminal condition that every woman has called “I could stand to lose 5 pounds.” But back to my point – turns out, you actually have to move your body. It’s weird. Probably I would be losing more if I would stop eating ice cream and baking cookies (today I made chocolate chip with pecans!), but what kind of life is that.
- I have an unending supply of energy. This is one of those things you hear about exercise and as a couch potato, you think is ridiculous and can’t possibly be true. It is. I can’t sit still anymore. Today when I made the cookies? That happened after I decided to spend the afternoon doing nothing but laying on the couch and watching streaming Netflix movies. That lasted….3 minutes into the movie. So I thought, I’ll just whip up a batch of cookies and THEN I will lay down. But then instead I came in here to write this blog entry. You get the idea.
- I feel very accomplished every day. The programs I’m doing are designed to start from the very beginning and gradually increase the amount of time you can run at once. So, day one of the 3 week program was run 1 minute/walk 1 minute, 10 times. The time builds from there. Day 21 was run 5 minutes/walk 1 minute, 5 times. Every time I get the email telling me how long to run that day, I find it intimidating. But every time, I push myself that extra minute and I finish. Woo hoo! And every day, Smarty tells me that he is proud of me and that is pretty awesome too. I think besides myself, he is the only one who believes I will be running a 5K by the fall. (Now, if only I could convince him to stop smoking, we would be so healthy!)
When I started this blog, one of my ideas was to track my running progress, including time, weight loss, etc. But who am I kidding. No woman in the world is going to track her weight online for the world to see. I guess those celebrities being paid by Jenny Craig would, but not me. So, I will just tell you, yesterday I did 3 increments of running 9 minutes/walking 1 minute. Monday, I go to 3 increments of running 10 minutes/walking 1 minute. When this is over, I am supposed to be running 30-35 minutes nonstop I think. A 5K is 3.1 miles, so I guess I have to get myself to a 10 minute mile. We’ll see what these short legs can do.
