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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