Thursday, June 21, 2012

Training Day 1

Last night began my journey.  The format for the program was simple - 5 minute warm-up walk followed by alternating between jogging for 60 seconds and speed-walking for 90 seconds for a total of 20 minutes, and then a 5 minute cool-down walk, for a total of a 30 minute workout.  Do this three times a week and after 9 weeks, you'll be running a 5K.  Of course, the walk & run times change the further along you go, but the idea is 30 minutes, 3 times a week for 9 weeks.  Since I have just over 9 weeks before my race, I want to aim to train 4 times a week instead, just to make sure that I'm comfortable with everything and that I'm in good enough shape to do a real run.  Especially since it's at the end of August and who knows how hot it's going to be.  So I want to be in the best shape I can be in before the day of the run.

Going into the first day I was a bit nervous.  I have never run for any amount of time in my life.  In middle school, we were forced to do the mile run in gym class.  I started out running it - and I must admit that I kept a really good pace too!  I was fast!  And then I had an asthma attack, went to the nurse's office, was sent home & off to the hospital we went.  From that point on, I walked the mile run.

The fact that this workout was broken down into minute-long runs kept me hopeful.  But I wasn't sure where I should be walking/running as far as pace went.  I talked with my sister, who is an avid runner, and she told me to aim for a pace of about 5mph for running - that's what she aims to do when training for her marathons.  She also mentioned that I should be running at an incline of at least 1 to help simulate running outside.  But since this was only my second time ever on this treadmill, I wasn't very familiar with it.  I felt like the incline part wasn't working.  I would press the button to increase the incline, and I heard a mechanical noise, but I didn't feel like it moved anywhere.  So I set it at a 10, as high as it would go, and that's where I left it.  I wasn't even sure it was actually inclined at all.

The 5 minute warm-up walk was difficult to pace.  I have no idea how fast I walk, I have no idea what any mile per hour feels like to walk, so I'm flying blind.  I just start walking and ease up on the "increase speed" button when I feel like I'm an an OK pace.  Last night it was at a 3.

We hit the first minute of a jog, and again, I decide to just go for it and push it up to 5.  Not too bad!  I survived!  I didn't fall off the treadmill and I didn't throw up!  Both of which I of course am afraid of, thank you Biggest Loser.  The second time to jog comes up and I fly through that as well.  I start thinking, "I can DO this!  I really can!".  And when we go back to walking, a 3 just seems like it's too slow, so over the course of the 20 minutes, I gradually increase the walk to a 3.6, and that's where I kept it through the end (for the walking).

I was doing OK, except that I realized I had a hard time looking anywhere but the clock on the iPad, and I didn't want to do that.  But when I looked up ahead in front of me, I started to get dizzy.  No, dizzy isn't the right word...I felt off-balance.  Something was weird when I tried to look straight ahead and I couldn't put my finger on it.  So I kept staring at the iPad for fear of falling off the treadmill.

After a while, I started to feel worn out.  I felt like my heart was beating inside my head instead of my chest, I could see my blood pressure in my eyes, my neck was starting to get stiff from staring down, and I was dripping with sweat.  I thought that I HAD to be nearing the end of this.  So I looked at the ticker on the bottom right of the app that shows you how much you have left for the entire workout, and I wanted to cry when it read 18:27.  I wasn't even halfway through!  But I pressed on and I started to feel better the further along I got.  At the end of it, during the 5 minute cool-down walk, I decided to move the iPad and see how far I had actually covered.  When I saw 1.73 miles, I thought, "I can push it to 2!"  And so I set my speed back at a 5 and kept an eye on the clock so that I could go back to walking after 1 minute.  It took two turns of running to push past the 2 mile mark, but I did it!  I followed up with the 5 minute cool-down walk, so when all was said & done, I covered a total of 2.3 miles.

Not bad for my first attempt at running!  I think tomorrow I'm going to try to walk and run just a little bit faster.  Nothing too crazy, but I want to try to push myself a little and I find that I'm kinda doing that naturally anyway :)

Oh, and I should mention that the incline DID in fact work, but I didn't realize this until I got off of the treadmill & tried to walk on level ground, LOL.  I almost fell over!  This also accounts for the loss of balance I had while trying to run.  Go figure!  Hopefully I'll be more balanced tomorrow, haha!

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