Couch Potato to 5k

Couch potato = me
5k = Air Force 5k on September 18th

I started this crazy running about 6 weeks ago. I had quite a few friends who had started running and it motivated me to at least give it a try. I used to run during gym in High School and I knew that I might not be fast, but I had endurance to run for half an hour or more. Could I still do it? I figured I might as well give it a try. It's summer and it's free (once you buy a good pair of running shoes.)

Melissa told me about podrunner.com which does interval training that goes along with the Couch Potato to 5k program. Basically, the 1st week you run for 60 seconds, walk for 90 seconds and continue alternating between running and walking for about half an hour. The 2nd week you run for 90 seconds, then walk for 2 minutes, run 90 seconds, walk 2 minutes... you get the point. The podrunner.com site has a podcast that you download to your ipod or mp3 player. It plays upbeat music and has a tone when you go back and forth between walking & running. Each week there's a different podcast to download with different music.

So I went to Up and Running and had my feet measured. They check to see how much your arch changes between resting and standing and this lets them know the style of shoe you need. So they brought out three different pair of shoes and had me walk around in them. I decided on a silver, white, and pink pair of New Balance running shoes.


I then downloaded the first week of podrunner and headed out to run around the neighborhood for the first time. I gotta tell you, after the 8th time of running for a minute, I thought I was going to die. Could I really do this?

The next time I ran, Melissa and I ran together and she goofed around and kept things fun. When we'd hear the tone to start running we'd both want to groan but she encouraged me to say "woo hoo!" instead. It got to be a joke and we'd yell "woo hoo!" when we were so tired and we'd hear the tone for the last time.

We ran around a trail/track around a park near my house. We ran around Lincoln Park and the neighborhood next door. We ran outside near Trent Arena, we ran inside Trent Arena. We ran in the neighborhood near Melissa's house, but that first hill was a doozy!! And we ran at the Kettering Rec Center. We're not sure how far we ran, but we knew how long we were running. The intervals were always about 28 minutes long and we'd keep going no matter how tired we got. The great part was that we could see progress. Each week we had to run longer, but we did it!

Somewhere around the 3rd week when we were running 3 minutes at a time, Melissa and I decided to see how long we could run. So on the last interval of running, we decided to just keep going. We lasted about 5-6 minutes and proved to ourselves that this was definitely something we could do. I have no idea how long I ran that evening, but it felt GREAT. Who knew that I could run?

Melissa and the kiddos have left for Idaho, as they do every year, and will be back in August. This means I have 5-6 weeks of running by myself. So far I've stayed on track and stayed motivated. Though I think Melissa pushed me to run harder than I do when I run alone.

Tonight I started week 5 of the podcast. Five minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking, 5 minutes of walking, 3 minutes of walking, and another 5 minutes of running. With warm up and cool down, this was about 2 miles. It wore me out, but I finished.

The idea of doing a 5k in 2 months seems easy enough. That's just another mile than I'm doing now and I can always walk part of it. But I don't want to walk it, I want to RUN the 5k. This is my goal. I also want to run the 3.1 miles in less than 35 minutes. No idea if I can do that, but I want to. It's another goal that I'm pushing myself towards, and I've been told it's doable if I keep on training like I have.

So I've been running 3 times a week since the 3rd week (only twice a week the first two weeks), which is much more regular exercise than I've ever done in my life. Have I lost weight? No. Am I discouraged? No. The point isn't to lose weight, the point is to run, and run longer each week. This I am doing, and I've impressed myself week after week. Gotta be honest though, I'm really hoping that the weight starts coming off at some point. This would definitely help my knees and increase my time. But I'll be patient, it'll happen. Form follows function. (Though I will mention that from the waist down everything is getting pretty toned and less jiggly. Yay!!)

Not sure why it's taken me so long to blog about running. I guess I didn't want to make a big deal about it. It's a funny thing, but when I mention to people that I've started running, usually they respond by telling me why they can't run. That's fine, don't run. But please don't give me excuses because my brain stores these away for the days when I don't feel like running. My knees hurt the day after I run (but not the days I run, or I don't run). My lungs aren't at 100% and they never will be, but I feel a need to push them as hard as possible anyway. And I keep wondering if I should up my beta-blocker again. (Lowered it last year when we started trying to get pregnant.) Am I healthy enough to run? Or have I been using all these as excuses to not do this before?

And the words keep going through my head "just do it, just do it, just do it." So I just do it. And so far the knees, the lungs, the heart, and the will power have held up just fine.