Couch to 5k: Week 5, Day 3

Today I feel very, very accomplished. I did something today that I have never been able to do in my life, I ran for 20 minutes NON STOP! It was amazing. The mere idea of doing this was very daunting and it seemed like I wasn't going to be able to make it through, but I did! The last five minutes I had to keep telling myself "just keep putting one foot in front of the other" and that was how I managed to get through it. It was hot, Meredith got wore out (she is currently passed out in the middle of my floor, unmoving even when I go in and out of the room- VERY unusual), but I feel fantastic now. I have three weeks left in the program, and I KNOW that I can finish it now.

I am actually very excited because I considering entering my very first race, the Neuse River Bridge Run. They have a half-marathon, a 10k, and a 5k. I, of course, will be entering the 5k portion. It is on October 16th, so I have 4.5 weeks left to get my butt ready to run run run! I think this is a totally achievable goal and I am feeling very good about this :)

Couch to 5k: Week 5, Day 2

Today I did something I have never done before, I ran for 8 minutes straight... and I did it twice! Actually, I did better than that, but more on that in a minute. Remember, we are looking at this program as a "baby steps" program. I am slowly working myself towards a 5k and I hope to be able to enter one maybe at the end of October or the beginning of November. So, I need to start researching!

Today's program was: 5 minute warm up, 8 minute run, 5 minute recovery, 8 minute run, 5 minute cool down. That in and of itself looked intimidating enough to me because I had only run as much as 5 minutes at a time previously. The first run went really well and I kept up a good pace throughout the whole thing. Meredith didn't even really slow me down today, which was such a good thing because if she had, I am not sure I would have completed today's run successfully. I was sure glad when the timer went off and told me to go ahead and take my 5 minute recovery! On my second 8 minute run, I attempted to skip a song and I ended up pausing my timer (unknowingly), which caused me to run for a total of 12 minutes for my second run- making my total for the day 20 minutes. This will probably end up being a good thing when I do my run tomorrow because tomorrow I am supposed to run for 20 minutes non stop!

And because I am going to make running a lifelong habit- I need to track the amount of miles on my shoes. Today I am going to guess that so far, my shoes have about 12 miles on them.