RUN TODD RUN, Week 5

THURSDAY, 5/27/10
Ran earlier in the day...which was HOT. As if the heat wasn't enough, I also decided to shoot video of myself running for the little vlog I do over on YouTube. You know what's not fun...editing footage wherein you get sweatier & sweatier over a four minute span.

You may have seen in the last running post that I've moved off the prescribed running routes because they're advancing too fast. At this point, I should be clocking good 20 and 30 minute runs three times a week. Well, guess what? I ain't there. I can run a good 10 or 11 minutes comfortably, but that isn't gonna' cut it.

For the Thursday run, I decided to go for 17 minutes. Staying at 15 would have been much easier, but I wanted to see how much energy I had on the back end of the run. It was hard, but I did it. I haven't experienced any sort of "runners euphoria" yet, but I will say I'm starting to feel really good after the run. I don't feel it as much when I jog at night, but morning runs really do give me a shot of energy. Guess I should start doing it at 5am and get a jump on my day, huh?

Fairly certain that I'm not going to be ready for the 5k next weekend. I'm not giving up. But I'm also not gonna' beat myself up if my body isn't ready, yet.

FRIDAY, 5/28/10
So, Friday probably wasn't the best day to run. There were a few factors at play:

1. I worked late on Thursday night and ending up going to bed Friday morning around 3am. Not bad, unless your kids get up at 6. So I was running on a small amount of sleep.
2. Kristen decided to host a Saturday garage sale while I helped a friend move on Saturday. My Friday consisted of hoisting massive tables and appliances as we moved them into the right places.
3. Double Stuff Oreos and milk at around 5:30pm.

The last factor was probably the killer. I was so proud of my 17 minute run the day before, I decided that I'd try to really bust it and hit a 10 minute mile.

At around four minutes, my stomach suddenly asked me to stop running. So I did.

On the whole, my exercise looked like this:

5 min. warm up
4 min. run
5 min. walk
4 min. run
5 min. walk
10 min. run.

See what happened there? After that first four minute disaster, I took a walk break and thought,

"Okay, I'm ready. Let's go!"

And ran for four minutes again.

My the third and final attempt, I decided I had to at least hold the status quo of the 10 minute run. I ended the exercise feeling disappointed (and quite a bit sick.) It's still over 30 minutes of cardio, which is good, but it doesn't come close to the massive (respectively) run I did on Thursday morning.

Don't have a plan for Saturday. Betting that the garage sale combined with the moving of furniture and normal pre-church preparations might be enough exercise for me.

But I will be staying away from the Oreos.

MONDAY, 5/31/10
I hate running on Monday. Sundays are usually a pretty busy day for me and most of it is spent on my feet. It's not terrible, running on Mondays always reminds me that my legs are recuperating. Couldn't hit the 17 min. again. Ran for 12 minutes or so and then did a lot of walking.

I've decided to postpone the 5k. We're leaving for vacation the very next day and I'm not nowhere near being ready. Since I'm not working on a deadline now, I'm wondering about starting "Couch to 5k" all over again. Might be fun to do it from week 1 onward, but wonder if the early weeks would feel like regression.

SUPPLEMENTAL: Wasn't planning on this, but once the kids were in bed Monday night, I went back out for another run. Originally, my plan was to run the day 1, week 1 from the C25K site. (60 sec. run, 90 sec. walk for 20 minutes.) Did that and enjoyed it...it was a workout even now! But after doing that, I decided to try to tack on a mile. I put the stopwatch down and just ran a mile. Knees were feeling Tuesday morning, but I felt pretty good getting two separate exercise sessions in. I'm also trying to stay away from the sweets - always have more energy for running when I'm staying off the candy and ice cream.