I don't know about you, but I was moving rather slow this morning. As much as I enjoy the evening hours of daylight it brings, I have a hard time with it being dark when I get up. My body just doesn't want to get moving. This morning, as my alarm went off, I was rather confused. It was SO dark out, and the alarm sounds at 7am! Of course, the fact that it was rainy and cloudy didn't help, but it was hard to get out of the warm bed to get ready to go to the gym.
But off to the gym I went, to start Week 2 of my Couch to 5K program. When I looked at it last night, I didn't think it looked too bad. This week, it's a 5 minute warm up, followed by 20 minutes of running for 90 seconds and walking for 2 minutes, and completes with a 5 minute cool down. Silly me, but after how great I felt last week, adding another 30 seconds of running show be a breeze, right? Yeah, not so much. Two cycles in and I thought I was going to die! My heart rate was taking forever to come back down while walking, and those 2 minutes went quick. I wanted to quit at least 3 times during those 20 minutes.
Cussing to myself the whole time, I finished the 30 minutes. I refuse to give up. At least for this week ;) I will learn to love running...or die trying.
I remember that one being a big jump, too, for some reason. I don't know why that extra 30 seconds feels so hard, but it does. If your experience follows mine, it will probably be hard again on Wednesday, but by Friday (or whatever days you do your runs...) it will start to get easier.
ReplyDeleteLike I said before, I stuck with my program for double the time, so I didn't move on to the next week until the current week's routine got almost too easy, which usually happened at the end of the second week on the routine (er, if that makes sense- on the "B" week, so week 1-A was hard but by the end of week 1-B, it was easy enough that I moved on to week 2).
Anyhow, stick with it, just a bit longer! Each new set of intervals feels really hard, but you'll feel so awesome on the day when they start feeling easy. A month or so from now, just for fun, go back and do your routine from week 1- you'll see how far you've come! Eventually, you'll start to feel really good when you run- just take it slow, and don't be afraid to modify the routine to fit your needs. If 90 seconds really is too long for you, then do one 90 sec rep, walk 2 minutes, then do 60 sec, walk 2- repeat, etc.
I am so thrilled with you keeping it up- we'll make a runner out of you in no time!
I need to live by you. I need your motivation PLEASE
ReplyDeleteKeep at it!!! You CAN do this!
ReplyDeleteYou are inspiring! I need to get on it like you... I love your "I will learn to love running..." mantra. You could put that to snappy music and sell it on iTunes. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the cheers today!
Carrie