Monday, June 14, 2010

Doubts and Motivation

Today (written on Friday) was a distance running day, but I cut it a bit short.  I'm still getting adjusted to working out five days a week, although I do really look forward to my activities in the afternoon.  I also find it hard to go an extra mile when I'm close to home, so I think I'm going to add more loops in to the earlier parts of my workout so that just getting home afterwards will put me up to the 5K distance.  I don't have a problem running the whole thing, but I think I just need more motivation.

I'm at the point in my progress where I'm not sure whether I really want to run the 5K on July 10th or not.  I doubt whether or not I can do it, and I worry that I will end up disappointing myself.  I guess I need to quit fearing disappointment so much and just go for it, though.  Besides, I think finishing it will be all that much sweeter if there are doubts about it now.  :)  I really can do this thing - I may not run the whole thing, but I will finish, and I will finish running!

Today's workout:
2.32 miles
13:27 min/mile

Friday, June 11, 2010

Day 37 and Day 38 or So...

Maybe I should quit numbering the days I work out.  Because there have been a lot of them, and a lot of them I haven't written about.  I'm too busy squeezing extra working out days into my schedule to write about them most of the time...

Anyhow, this week I started my new program of running on MWF and doing lower impact exercises on TH.  I think I like the extra activity in my life, and I have found new excitement.  This week I decided to start swimming, which I will probably stick with for a while.  I'm trying to teach myself to properly swim freestyle.  It's really hard for me because I'm used to swimming freestyle with my head above the water.  I was amazingly surprised at how much easier it is to swim below the water and how hard it is to coordinate arms, legs, and breathing.  I tend to do a lot of kicking, and I tend to want to breath a lot more than is efficient...  My throat is very sore today from all the water I inhaled yesterday, mostly through my nose (ugh worst feeling ever), but I saw drastic improvements from the time I first got into the water to the time I finished for the night.  Thirty minutes flew by, and my arms are delightfully sore, which is a similar level of soreness to what my legs felt when I first started running.  Now I have a new set of goals to work towards in an activity that works different muscles than running, which should give me a good overall fitness.

An active lifestyle...  I like having it.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Day 36: A Walk in the Park

I am really enjoying explorations of the neighborhoods surrounding my apartment complex.  And I love the hot weather lately - getting REALLY sweaty on a run makes me feel like I'm really workin' it!

I didn't have a lot of time, so I decided to just do a mile.  I warmed up for a few minutes by jogging around Kiwanis Park, then I found a shady area in the grass to do my stretches and started off up the hill.  I decided to try jogging two blocks and walking one and alternating like that as long as I could.  The blocks started getting kind of irregular after a little while, which made that plan a little more difficult, and there were a few stops here and there waiting for cars to pass so I could cross the street, but I still managed to shave some time off of my mile pace.

I misjudged and ended up going 1.5 miles.  I got a phone call that interrupted my run in several ways.  I walked so I wasn't breathing heavily during the conversation, and the GPS program I use to keep track of mileage and pace shut down for a time.  Hate it when that happens!

I'm considering switching to running in different ways on different days of the week.  I think on one day of the week I'm going to run the C25K program, which is based on time, and one day of the week I'll run for distance (maybe a 5K walk/run), and one day of the week, I'll do a short run for "speed."  I kind of want to add swimming and/or weight lifting twice a week to my routine, but I'm not sure where to squeeze it in to my schedule...

Anyhow, yesterday's routine:
1.5 miles
12:55 min/mile

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Day 35: National Running Day

I have learned that I need to fully charge all of my devices before I start running.  I had to return my skullcandy headphones to the company for a replacement pair (sad day), so I've been using stereo bluetooth headphones, but I didn't charge them before going.  I thought I had charged them recently, but not so, and so I ran the last mile without music.  Boo.

The route I ran was actually pretty great.  I think I will use it from now on for my longer runs.  It goes up through Kiwanis park - I run around once for a warm-up, then stretch in the shade under a tree - and then up a hill through residential areas, down past Seven Peaks water park, and then back up 9th East.  It has a good mixture of uphill, downhill, and flat, pretty evenly spaced blocks so I can tell myself to run until the end of the block, a lot to look at, and not very many cars.

Something that I may change is to not run past the guy holding the Little Caesar's sign.  He harassed me about buying a $5 pizza on my way home.  Ew.  That's about the last thing I want to think about after running 3 miles: greasy lukewarm pizza.  I guess the incentive is that he makes me want to run faster because the faster I run the less I have to hear of him...

I had to guess at my pace, and I say 2.9 miles in 38 minutes.  No clue what my pace was because the mileage is foggy at best, but I did feel like I ran it faster than usual so I could get home for institute, so take it for what it's worth.  It's a lot warmer out now, so I'm breathing much more comfortably without all that cold air in my lungs.

I'm going to set a goal to get my mile pace in the 12 minute range for the 5K.  I think I can do that by then, but I certainly can't do it now.  Sometime between now and then I also want to flat-out run a full mile without stopping.  That goal is slightly less reasonable, but it's something I've done before on a treadmill, so I know that I will be able to do it on the road as well.  It's all going to happen; I just have to be patient with it!