I believe I stated in my first post that I am a new runner. I am also something of an accidental runner. I've always joked that I hate running so much that I'd have to be chased by a crazed lunatic to do any now that I'm out of gym class and don't have to meet the President's Physical Fitness standards. And to be honest, if I was being chased by a crazed lunatic, I might give up after a brief sprint. I just have never liked running. It always seemed so hard and I was immediately out of breath.
However, the last five years or so I have been working out regularly - meaning 5 or more days a week. I always stuck to walking outside when the weather was nice (or when it was not so nice the year we had a dog) and various DVDs (anything Jillian Michaels, Jackie Warner, Tony Horton, etc.). Then I was lucky enough to inherit an ancient treadmill. It was a game changer.
I pretty much ignored it the first week I had it. Then I used it occasionally - but only for brisk walks. Even still, I pretty much preferred walking outside. Then we put a TV in the room with the treadmill and hooked up Netflix. Again. A game changer.
The final pieces of the puzzle was a HIIT workout I found in an issue of Self Magazine. You were supposed to do high intensity intervals three times a week. They were all running intervals. I figured I'd give it a try. Why not? I can run fast for 60 seconds because I know I'll get to walk for 60 seconds immediately after. I went through this workout - I believe there were five or six weeks to it - and made it almost to the end. I forget what made me stop. But Fridays were always supposed to be more of a distance run and not intervals and I always kind of chickened out on those days and just repeated one of the interval workouts.
Well fast forward a year or two. I'd started doing Piloxing (sidenote: everyone should try piloxing it is so fun!) and had found a short jogging workout online that slowly increased your speed and then worked you back down to a walk. The more I did this workout, the longer I would try to do each jogging interval. If it said 4 minutes, I tried to go 8. Then I started increasing the incline. One day, I finally said "I wonder how far I can actually jog without stopping?" I had recently found another workout about training for a 5K from Self Magazine. The chart suggested jogging at around 5mph. That seemed easy enough. The jogging workout I had been doing had me going 6 mph or 6.5 mph for a couple minutes at the fastest. I surely could handle 5 mph.
The next day I was determined. I put on Season One Episode One of Dawson's Creek (yep, it is my show of choice when running on the treadmill now). I put the treadmill up to 5 mph and immediately covered up the display with a towel so I couldn't see how far I'd gone. I finally couldn't stand it and peek at the display when I was about 1.5 miles in. I couldn't believe I had gone that far without stopping. I decided I was going to try to go for 3 miles. I did it! I was so excited. I felt superhuman. No one in the history of time had run as far or as fast as I had. Was this the high everyone talked about with running?
I don't want to say I was immediately hooked, but I definitely decided to run 3.25 miles the next day and the day after. So I guess I'm kind of hooked. I am reading Runner's World all of the time and trying to find out everything I can about running.
Achievement Unlocked: Run 3 miles without stopping.
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