C25K Update

I've been torn between documenting my running progress then having to admit failure, and not documenting it then not having a good story to go along with my success.  My fear of public failure has won out so far, so other than a couple brief mentions on this blog I've kept mostly quiet on the subject and only told a few people.  Now that I've had some degree of success I think I can share what I've accomplished.

I started in the middle of October.  (Here's my first post.) The first week wasn't too bad, except that I was so sore after the first day that I hobbled around for a couple weeks.  The second week was a little harder, 6 90-second jogs alternating with walking.  Looking back that sounds so easy, but at the time it definitely wasn't.  Sometime in those first two weeks I read somewhere that it was ok to repeat weeks if you didn't feel comfortable moving up to the next level.  I think that's the only thing that kept me going.  I don't remember which weeks I repeated or how many times I repeated them, but last week (which was somewhere around my 14th week) I was still on the week 5 workout.  The week 5 day 3 assignment was to walk for 5 minutes, run for 20 minutes, then walk for 5 minutes.  Honestly, I didn't think I'd ever be able to do that!  But last Friday I finally decided to try.  And guess what - it didn't kill me!  It didn't even make my legs sore!  Sure I was out of breath a little, but that's what happens when you run.  This week I did all the week 6 workouts.  Today I ran for 25 minutes.  Monday I'll tackle week 7, which is three more 25-minute runs.  Week 8 is 28-minute runs, week 9 is 30-minute runs, then I'm done with the program and I can do whatever I want, as long as I keep running three times a week.

These are my new friends.  I bought them after meeting my goal of walking / running for three months.  I almost feel like I should name them, but I'm not sure if a pair of shoes gets one name or if each shoe gets its own name.  I hope to spend a couple of good years with these shoes and wear them out.  I can't say I love running.  I don't even really like it.  I might actually hate it while I'm doing it, at least for the first 5 - 10 minutes.  I love the feeling I have when I'm done, though.  When I've accomplished something I didn't think I could do, something I couldn't do a few months ago.  I love that feeling so much that I almost can't wait until Monday, when I get to run again.