I am a lousy runner. Actually, it's not the running part that I'm that bad at, it's the keeping on top of it that kills me. If I don't have a goal and a plan to get me to that goal, everything falls apart. This is why I was awful at those "distance learning" classes in college where you do everything on your own but show up for the tests every month. I always did ALL of the work & studying the two days before the test. This is why I could NEVER do online college because I'd never actually do anything on my own. This is why I would make an awful homeschooling mother - unless everything is broken down for me and written out step by step and scheduled, I'd never do it.
It's not for lack of want - I WANT to stay on top of things. But everything else gets in the way. And then it's a cycle. I go off track for a few days. No big deal. But after a few days I am physically exhausted and I have no energy to put myself on that treadmill. You know why I have no energy? Because I haven't been on the treadmill in days. And the more I put it off, the less I want to do it, the less motivation I have to do it. And it just keeps repeating. I know all of this in my brain, and yet it continues to happen.
But dilemma resolved - I have another race to train for on December 1st. I have just over 7 weeks to train for it (54 days to be exact, that's 7 weeks and 4 days), and that's just about how long it took me to complete the Couch to 5K program the first time around. It's set up to be 9 weeks long, but that's if you're only training 3 times a week for 9 weeks. If I do it 4 times a week it's 7 weeks. So I have 27 training days to get myself back to 5K ready. And since I feel like I'm starting all over again and I want to get myself to a faster speed, I've decided to start the training program from the beginning. Figuring that if I start at a faster speed and keep it up the whole time, I'll be able to run the full 5K at the faster speed by the end of it. It makes sense in theory, we will see how it goes in reality.
So here we are, it's Day 1 again and I just completed my first run-type thing. As a refresher, it's 1:00 running followed by 1:30 walking, with a 5:00 warm-up and 5:00 cool-down speed walk for a total of a 30:00 workout. Since I don't want to lose the little endurance that I have built up, when the program is complete I plan on running a set distance afterwords as well, at least in the beginning weeks because I know if I don't I'll lose the ability to go as far as I have been able to go.
It's been well over a week since my last run so I really feel like I'm starting over completely! When it came time for the first 1:00 run, I hit the 7 button and threw myself into it, hoping I wouldn't fly off of the treadmill. Of course I didn't, lol. I'm undecided if I want my goal speed to be a 7 or an 8, so I'm starting at a 7, but I have a feeling I'll be working my way up to an 8. I was already tempted to push it up today but I didn't want to overdo it since it's been a while since I've had physical activity. I gotta say that those 1:00's were tough, but it felt SOOOOO good to be moving again!
When I got to my 5:00 cool-down walk, I had gone just over 2 miles. I wanted to run out a mile and make it an even 3 miles, but I kept it simple and ran another half mile. Maybe I'll go for the full mile tomorrow. I'm feeling really good right now, and I don't want to push too hard and have the aches and pains affect me early on. I don't want a reason to lay off or have to rest for an extra day because this time I don't have the extra days to lose! Of course, I already know that the last few weeks are straight running for 20, 25 & 30 minutes, and at that point I'll just be shooting for the 3.1 miles instead of the time, so there is wiggle room, but I don't want to go into this thinking that.
I have a goal, and I have a plan. Let's do this! (Again!)
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