My new hobby is chatting with other runners. I don't really mean to do this; somehow, it just happens. For instance, I was at our first speech tournament of the year this past weekend (update on that later) and I sat down to chat with my son's debate partner's mother. Turns out that she ran her first marathon last summer and has been running since she was in high school. She encouraged me to keep running, reminded me how good it is for me, promised me that there will come a time when I won't want to die every time I run.Thursday morning was not one of those times.
I decided to go running on Thursday because I knew we'd be at the tournament all weekend and I likely wouldn't have time or opportunity to take a jog. Once I was on the track, I decided to move on up to the next level of the Couch Potato to 5k. Week Three. 90 seconds running, 90 seconds walking, 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking. It. Was. Torture. I'm not going to lie about it. I was panting, praying, and coming thisclose to dying.
But live I did. I did intervals for 33 minutes and was on the trail for a total of 50 minutes.
More than actually stay alive, I actually felt good when I was finished. AND I felt good enough that I went running again today. Kim and I braved the weather and, er...um...visited the health club again. What? Stop looking at me like that. I know I said I really love the outdoors and don't mind running in the cold, but it was BELOW ZERO this morning! That's, like, BELOW ZERO! They called school off everywhere! I may be insane, but I'm not crazy.
So we did the treadmill thing, and we decided to do the Week 3 thing together.
And I actually didn't want to die while I was on the treadmill. You know what else? It really wasn't all that hard! Now, I may not have run as fast as I could have, and I didn't have to brave the cold, but I actually did the intervals and didn't want to gnaw my own leg off.
We did 35 minutes of intervals and 60 minutes of exercise total.
And you know what else? Kim talked me into standing on the scale again. And I'm at 174! Yeah me! That means that I have less than forty pounds to go to reach my target weight, and it means that I actually HAVE lost weight! Especially considering that I weighed in at 185 last time I stepped on the scale.
I'm thankful for encouragement. This is almost addictive, now. While I may want to die again in the future, for now, Kristi's right--I'm actually enjoying it!
