I have officially finished the C25K plan.  That is I can run 30 minutes, not so much that I can run 3 miles.  This morning I’m going to map out 3 miles through the neighborhood in my car so I can see how far that is.  At my speed it’ll probably be a three hour run, but we shall see.

My next goal is to start one of the 5k to 10k plans.  I found one in a podcast for the ipod that I’ll probably use.  Unfortunately it doesn’t have the same huge user base as the C25K plan but I did find a chart of how much running is involved each week.  It’s a lot!   But it sounds really doable because it goes back to very short runs (4-6 minutes) with 60-90 second walks in between.  I’ll have to do a bit more investigating other pans before I decide which one to use, but I definitely need to keep upping my time. 

Someday I’ll start working on my speed as a goal. I’ve notices a lot of people running in this neighborhood now that I’m out and about, and most of them run a whole lot faster than I do.  But that’s a goal for another time.

So Sunday night after I wrote that post I ran on the tread mill for 30 minutes and then did one minute walk and 3 minute run * 4 which was by FAR my best run yet. 

Then Monday my sister had TWINS (yay!) and Tuesday and Wednesday I was sick as a dog and….  my next run was yesterday (Sunday) morning, for about 25 minutes with a walk in the middle.   

So I missed an entire week of running, I did no exercise of any kind to be honest.  I don’t even think I used the stairs at work once which is unusual for me.  Proves the point that a body at rest tends to stay at rest!

But my mom decided that she was going to start the C25K plan so I started week 1 day one with her last night.  She did better than I did my first day, she finished without ever thinking of quitting.  Plus this morning’s almost 25 minute run was with my brother-in-law.  Two runs with two different running partners in one day!

Now that I may have convinced 2 family members that running is all that I better get my butt back out there and on schedule.  So once again my alarm is set for 4:30 a.m. and my sneakers and socks are sitting at the end of the bed.  No more excuses!

By the way, notice how I blame this entire falling off the wagon thing on my sister having babies?  Talk about some negative karma…

I was all excited to start week 7, it’s a 25 minute run every day.  I didn’t run in the morning because I had an errand to run, and I had a dinner date with the family (to include wine) so I wasn’t going to run last night so I decided the thing to do was run in the middle of the day.

I made it all the way to 6 minutes before deciding that running 25 minutes in 80 degree weather with the sun trying to stop me was not a healthy idea.  What a fail!

Now it’s Sunday and I couldn’t run this morning because my older two kids are out and about and I don’t want my youngest waking up in an empty house (but I would have been back by now and he’s STILL sleeping) so I’m going to have to run tonight even if there are tornadoes, hurricanes, and large dogs out there. 

Maybe I’ll try a run on the treadmill this time.

W6D3- 25 minutes without walking

I enlisted my daughter to help me with this one.  She rode her bike alongside and caught me up on all the 5th grade going ons that could possibly be fit into 25 minutes.  Talk about a distraction, I was so busy listening to her that I was actually surprised when my time was up!  Now I’m wishing I knew someone around to go running with me, I may have to ask around.  It’s amazing how many people I see running in my neighborhood, and I don’t know ANY of them.  You can’t stop someone in the middle of a run to introduce yourself, I’ll have to see if any of them are on MapMyRun.

W6D1 – a 5 minute run, 8 minute run, then 5 again.  It should have been easy after running 20 minutes straight last time!  Not so much.

I like to run at a park on the weekend so that I can run on dirt.  This time I tried the park across the street from my house, I walk there all of the time and it’s a nice long, hard dirt road for as long as I could possibly go.  

What I didn’t notice all the times I’ve walked it is that that nice dirt road turns to deep soft sand quite a few times.  I was thinking all the sandy parts were at the beginning where I was walking anyway! 

The good news is I saw a deer, the bad news is I didn’t make it to the end of the second OR third run by a couple minutes.

After that I took two days off before W6D2, two ten minute runs.  I managed to finish them both on the nice, friendly, unchanging asphalt road.

Contrary to what I thought when writing the last post, the next two runs WERE easier and I made 20 minutes today without even passing out or anything.  I actually got over the feeling of molasses somewhere around 10 minutes.   

My big concern of the moment is how to listen to music while running.  I’ve been using my cell phone to listen to an mp3 with a voice over to tell when to run and when to walk, and I’ve just been putting the phone in my jacket pocket.  We’re not even all the way through February and it’s already getting too warm to wear a jacket running, no matter how early in the morning I run.  I’m thinking of getting the ipod touch just because I read somewhere you can get a gps app for it, which would make it much more worth the money.

I ran w4d2 last night, and I felt like I was running through molasses.  For the first time since I started running 4 weeks ago I started wondering what the hell I was thinking signing up for a 1/2 marathon when I hadn’t even started running at all.  At least I can walk as much as I need to.  But somehow I’m also supposed to raise $2,300 to go with them!  I know I made my goal $3,500 but now I’m wondering once again what I was thinking…

Then again I just read over the coming workouts for the Couch to 5 k plan and I just realized it has you running 30 minutes a DAY for week 8.  For some reason (I swear I read the whole plan multiple times) I thought that was just the last day of the plan.  That’ll be pretty cool if I can just get there!

I’m kind of looking forward to running tomorrow morning, but I’m kind of not because I’m worried it won’t be any easier than last night was.  How am I going to be able to get to the end of week 5 and run 20 minutes if 5 doesn’t get any easier?

I decided to start running every other day instead of running 3 days a week plus a really light Sunday.  So of course I woke up to my first Monday I was supposed to run and it was raining.  I know I’ll have to get used to running in rain if I’m gonna run in Florida, but I sooo wasn’t feeling it. I did my off day arm and core stuff instead.  But tonight when I got home I felt good so I went out and started week 4.  It’s 2 three minute runs and 2 five minute runs with little walks in between. AND I LIVED.  I didn’t go fast and I did get out of breath, but I don’t care because I still did it.

It was strangely different running at night instead of the morning.  Either way it’s dark, but in the evening there’s a surprising amount of people out doing whatever they’re doing, and plenty out walking their dogs.  I don’t usually like running when people can see me (I feel like I’m pretending to be a runner) but it was kinda nice to have people around, makes me realize how creepy running at 5 a.m. really is!

The best thing is since I wasn’t planning on running tonight I did two days of exercise today.  That means tomorrow can be a guilt free easy day. I’ll do some nice and easy yoga in the morning and spend the rest of the day in zen mode. 

I love weekend runs. Instead of running through a neighborhood in the dark I can run at a park and I can see where I’m going! If that’s not good enough it’s also the end of the week, which means I’ve finished another week in the program successfully!

One thing I’m quickly learning about running- it makes places a lot smaller.  The park I’ve been running at is about a mile long.  I didn’t know that until I started running, I thought it was a lot bigger.  Of course it’s on the water so if you have a boat it IS a lot bigger, but that’s besides the point.  Running gets you to the end of a mile awful fast- even when you’re doing more walking than running like I have been.

I went to a different park this weekend, and started at the place in the picture there.  Unfortunately that path ran out really quick, but I was still able to run along the water and watch for alligators.  None today, but I did see 3 deer when I was driving out of the park.  You have to love a Prius, it’s so quiet that the deer just let me coast by without running off.

Next week starts week 4, that means running for 5 minutes at a time.  According to the plan that’s about 1/2 a mile.  I don’t think that’s true in my case since I run extremely slow, but I’m going to call it a half mile anyways just because it sounds so impressive!

Happy news for me, friends from work said it was so hard to run this morning because it was literally 100% humidity this morning. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’ll take the excuse. I know it was foggy for certain.

On my break at work today it was really odd weather- I couldn’t tell if it was very slightly raining or like 200% humidity. If I stood still it was dry, but when I walked it felt like it was raining just a little! Four years in this state now and I’ll never get used to it.

Tomorrow’s forecast is early rain – it may be my first day running in rain. I’d feel bad for myself if I didn’t know that there are people running in the ice and snow. Suddenly I’m looking forward to a little rain!