C25K - W7D3 - He's going for distance, not going for speed

About 20 minutes ago, I completed my first set of 25 minute runs! While I say that with a great sense of accomplishment, I did manage to hurt myself a little bit in the process.

The run started out with the normal 5 minute walk and some stretching, but I decided to push the pace up a notch to try and increase my time. While my heart was in the right place, my body was not willing to let me go all out on this run. About 12 minutes in, I felt a little pain in my left shoulder. Not sure what it was, but I decided to calm it down for the rest of the run. I ended up jogging the rest of the way and did not do my 5 minute cool down walk. I hope I am not sore tomorrow because of that.

What I learned today:
I think I increased my distance a little bit, at the expense of my shoulder.
Slow and steady does win the race, and it doesn't hurt as much.
I need to find better ways to increase my speed and/or distance.



Slow and steady does not hurt as much

C25K - W7D2 - Baby it's cold outside

Today was a great day for a run... if I were not wearing shorts. This is the second time I have made the mistake of not checking the temperature before going out for my run. One of these days I will learn my lesson and check out weather.com before I get out of the house.

I usually have a lot of thoughts that get into my head when I am running, but the one that stood out today was "I wonder how far I ran today?". I decided that I would drive around the block and check my odometer and my calculations say that I did 2 miles in 25 minutes. I think that it is a little slow, but I am not about to fartlek training just yet. I just want to get through being able to run a 5K without walking, which I believe I will be able to do by the end of March.

If you are looking for a free way to see how far you are running, try the Google Map Pedometer.
The utility is free and was pretty close to my manual calculations from the car.

What I learned today:
I need to work hard to run a 5K, and even harder to get a better 5K time.
Need to check out the weather before I go for my run.
When it comes down to race day, I need to concentrate on the race and not whatever else is going on in my head.

C25K - W7D1 - I ran so far away

Week 7 on the C25K program is the first week where there are no walks in between each run. This is the first Monday that I have ever ran for 25 minutes straight, and it was a strenous beginning to the work week.

As a night-owl by nature, I got my 6 hours of sleep after numerous snooze bar smacks. There are clocks that do weird thing in order to disable the ability of the snooze bar, but I can't help myself. Someday I might learn how to stop hitting that snooze bar.

After getting dressed, my scale and I had a meeting of the minds. I willed it to show a number that was lower than the previous week and my mental acuity won! I think I lost 2 lbs this week, so I will do my best impression of shampoo instructions: Run, Lose Weight, Repeat.

My pre-run regimine of water and a bananna was fine and I started to stretch before my run. I don't think I stretch enough before my run, but I have not seen any bad effects of not doing this just yet.

Nothing to impressive happened in the run itself, but I did get the attention of a few dogs along the way. I did about 4 1/2 laps around the block in my 25 minutes, so I will go around tonight in my car and find out how many miles I ran today. I wish I had a Nike+ system so I could put all of this online, but I don't see a spare $300 hanging around. Maybe I should use that economic stimlus rebate from the government on that...

That's all I have for everyone today, but tomorrow I will be exploring the question: "What should I eat before my 5K?".