In Training...

In high school, I did a fair amount of morning running before school, but a horrible car accident in college in 1999 left me with a decent bit of knee damage, so my running has been sporadic at best.  Every now and again, I try to pick up where I left off, but it is short lived (and usually not the most pain free).  But, Sarah, Terri, and Seraphim (aka Sarah)  have really inspired me to try, try, try, again!  So I went to the running store (where the customer service and experience of the guys there kicks butt!!  LOVE THEM!!!)  and got a new pairs of shoes (Saucony), since my initial runs in my old (read: bought these just before Nick and Sophie were conceived...) shoes were met with a little foot asleepness, and started a real training plan (3x week/2 miles) to train for a 5K that Sarah and I are (gulp) running at the end of June.  Two weeks in, and I've upped it to 2.5 miles thrice weekly (starting this week).  And yesterday, I even picked up 3 new shirts (well, 2 are for yoga mostly since my ugly-but-effective-for-monster-boobs bra will show) and a pair of cool shorts and pants (that will do double duty for yoga) at Target (Champion brand, and on clearance to boot!).  Today, I did my first outside run alone (normally my outside runs are with Sarah and I train by myself at the gym before my yoga classes).  But, this morning, since we had Mass last night, I got dressed in one of my new, groovy outfits, laced up my sneakers, and headed out.

I mapped out a run through our neighborhood, and started off with a 0.14 walk, then jogged a mile and a half, walked another 0.07, then jogged 0.8, before cooling down with a 0.15 walk back to the house.  My total was 2.6647 miles in 37 minutes.  (Now, I realize, for "real" runners, this is slow as Christmas to kids on January 1st, but for me, with my injuries and the fact that I legitimately "JOG" and don't even attempt a real run, I'm pumped!).  My gym time is 2 miles in 28 minutes, with a handful of short walk recoveries.  But this drops my time by almost a minute per mile!  I'm pretty happy about that! And, it included hills- something my treadmill runs do NOT have!

Stay tuned and maybe, just maybe, I'll post the picture Peter took of me in my running outfit...  Maybe... We'll see...