Just over a year ago, Lora (my co-teacher at preschool) and I were having a discussion about getting healthy and how we both really needed to start exercising. We talked about how exercising is always easier with a partner and how we were together pretty much everyday anyway. We decided that we could piggy back time for exercising onto some of the times we were already together during the week without too much trouble.
At that time we were living in my parent's house and across the street was a great park with a really nice paved track that goes around the perimeter. We decided that we could go to the park after school and let the kids play while we walked around the track. Sometime between when we decided on this plan and when we actually met at the park, I got this harebrained idea that if we could walk the track, we could run the track. I downloaded the "Couch to 5K" app and had it in hand when we got to the park. Lora was hesitant to say the least when I presented the idea but is too nice to say no so we decided to give it at try. In the program, you alternate walking and running intervals and in the beginning your run intervals are 1 minute long. I am embarrassed to say that those 1 minutes where some of the longest and hardest of my life.
Thankfully we didn't give up and probably 6 months ago we finished the program. That means that we would run for thirty minutes at a time at close to a 10 min. mile pace. Since then we have maintained this, running approximately a 5K three times a week. Then, unfortunately for Lora, I got another harebrained idea. I started to feel like I wanted to push past what we were doing and train for a 10K. Without telling her, I signed up for 10K in September with another runner friend of mine. When I did tell her, she was supportive of my running it, but didn't think it was for her. We decided to stretch our runs just a bit to 35 mins and decided that I would do longer runs and training this summer after school was out. One day, a few weeks back, we were running and she started talking about the race. She told me that she had not even told her family yet, but that she had signed up for the race.
Since that day, we had continued with our plan of waiting to ramp up our training until school was out, but at the end our 35 min runs we were feeling more and more like we could do more and more. Finally on Friday, we decided to try for any extra 5 mins. At the end of that we were still feeling good so we added another 5 and then another and another. Eventually we stopped after a full 60 min. run!
I have to say that I am REALLY proud of myself. I am not a "runner" and to go from barely being able to run for 60 seconds to being able run for 60 minutes is beyond huge for me. I can't wait for race day. I just wish I didn't have to wait until September.
No comments:
Post a Comment