Couch to 5K: WEEK 8 IS DONE! ONE MORE WEEK TO GO!

Today before church, I went out for my W8D3 run. It was absolutely horrible! I ended up walking a couple times for a few seconds (once was halfway up an annoying hill) but kicked myself back in gear and kept with the running. It was NOT a good run by any stretch of the imagination. I let myself get waylaid by all kinds of negative thoughts... money, relationship difficulties, prescriptions vs. food vs. mortgage and not enough for all of them, obnoxious, mouthy teenagers, these hills really suck and I'll never be able to do a 5k and I hate this and I can't do it and OMG what am I gonna do about [insert various other stressors here] and I WANT TO CRY AND QUIT RIGHT NOW ON EVERYTHING!!!!!! Yeah, it was bad. But, no matter how ingloriously & slowly I finished today's run, finish I did. I'm NOT at all proud of how it went today (the other Week 8 runs were so easy and fun, a sucky run was very depressing... especially on top of my pre-existing depression of the day, LOL!), but hey - that's life. Some days are not good ones, some runs are not the best... but the trick is to keep going. So - regardless of my mental crankiness and downright LOUSY attitude today - Week 8 is finished.

Tomorrow morning, Week 9 officially begins!!! Wooohoo! My Couch to 5k graduation t-shirt has officially shipped, as per the email I got yesterday, and hopefully, God willing, I'll have my graduation run on Friday.

Even cooler: Today at church, I was reading the bulletin, and guess what my pastor's next four-week message series is titled? "BORN TO RUN!"

Next Sunday, the sermon is called "Focus," and is based on 1 Corinthians 9:24-27:

"Remember that in a race, everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize. You must also run in such a way that you will win. All athletes practice strict self-control. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. SO I RUN STRAIGHT TO THE GOAL, WITH PURPOSE IN EVERY STEP...I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, after preaching to others, I fear that I might be disqualified."

Each subsequent week likewise has a running-related verse that would take too long to type out here at the moment. Obviously, the whole series a comparison between running for a prize and a life lived to glorify Jesus...there are definite parallels between the two (and now that I'm actually running, I can see that even clearer than before). So much of it is just not quitting...fall, get back up, keep going... FOCUS on that goal and give it your all.

Uh, where was I? Oh yeah... week 8 done. I plan on wearing my C25K graduation t-shirt to church Sunday (how timely is that??? Too cool!). Hopefully nothing happens between now & then to screw that up... I wanna be able to graduate on time this week and not let myself get derailed again, lol. I have that 5k on Halloween to train for, too... must get myself in shape to be ABLE to run the full 5k by then. :) Another cool side note - a fellow C25Ker at church pointed out to me...the final message in Pastor's message series is called "FINISH" (based on Philippians 3:12-21) and is on November 1 - the day AFTER, God willing, I finish my very first 5k.

I have to wonder if all this is some kind of freaky coincidence, or if the pastor saw all us church C25K folks Facebook status messages and got inspiried?? LOL! Nah.. probably just random coincidence...but still...how freakin cool is that??? :) To say that message series is timely (in more ways that one!) is an understatement. :)

OK, Week 8 is done - ON TO THE NEXT! 3 runs to go, and I'm an official Couch to 5k graduate. :) wooohoo!

COUCH TO 5K: WEEK 8 UPDATE (yes, very late, I know!)

Fell behind on everything, sorry, y'all! Here's my updates for Week 8, Days 1 & 2;

WEEK 8, DAY 1:

Howdy, folks! Sorry it's been eons since I've been by. Life - and the deluge of torrential rains flooding that hit Georgia As Seen On TV - kept me away from running for the past three weeks or so. Ack! Today, I was DETERMINED to get out there again, since it hasn't rained in a few days and the door to our ark finally opened (LOL). It was 50 degrees when I left the house today... SO much better than jogging in 78 degrees of total humidity!!!!! Long story short, I ended up going to the park right down the road from our house, rather than the nice, FLAT park that's 15 minutes away. Ugh. But! I survived! And so did the dog! :) Even after not having jogged a bit in 3 weeks, it was surprisingly easy. Not "easy" like, literally "easy," but I wasn't dying like I thought I'd be. There were only a couple times I had to do some serious self-lecturing to get thru a tuff spot. 28 minutes, start to finish - wooohoo! Friday night (assuming I complete w8d2 that morning), I'm going to go ahead and order my graduation shirt...so I'll have it when I finish C25K - just 5 runs to go and I'm a graduate! Yikes, gotta run...time to jump in shower and hit the road. :) More later!

WEEK 8, DAY 2:

Week 8, Day 2 is finished!!!! :) Got out there again today with the dog... it was a little warmer today (57* as opposed to Wednesday's 49*) but still nice running weather. :) I've switched back to going to my "original" park with the small hills on the path, as opposed to the "flat" running track at the other park I was going to. There's two reasons for this: (1) the hilly-path park is exactly one mile from my home; the "nicer" park is 15-20 minutes away and is a pain to get home from due to morning traffic; and (2) there is a real live 5k i want to try on Halloween (the "Run Like Hell 5k" at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta) which apparently has a few hills along the way. Gah. I'm nowhere near running 5k "distance-wise" yet... I am just barely able to do 2 miles in 40 minutes (that's 28 mins of running, plus warmup & cooldown walks, lol). I figure it may take me an hour, or close to it, to do a REAL 5k... but by golly I'm gonna try!!!! I figure if I can cross the finish line and not die, I've succeeded. :) (and of course, i've already decided to wear my C25K graduation t-shirt at the race!) But, I'm digressing here. :)

Anyway: the doggie & I went to park, jogged, came home, both survived. :) Not really an awful lot to tell that I can recall...just yer average run in the park. Golly... 10 weeks ago, I never would have imagined saying that, ever! I couldn't even run ONE minute then... and I just ran 28 of them all at once, LOL!!!! pretty amazing. :-) No doubt now that the extra 2 minutes tacked on to next week's program - the final week of c25k - will be very do-able. And I absolutely CANNOT believe I just said that. Like, wow. Unbelievable... whod'a thunk it???? Certainly not me!!!!!!

OK, week 8, day 2 done... going to a Bible conference thingy tomorrow, then Sunday morning am planning on getting W8D3 out of the way, so next week I can knock out Week 9! :-)

Week 6, Day 1 of Couch to 5k!

Well, today was the first day of WEEK 6 (C25K is a 9-week program...nearly done!)! Holy cow, how'd i get here this fast???? LOL! Week 6, Day one consists of: 5-minute warmup walk, 5 minute jog, 3 minute walk, 8 minute jog, 3 minute walk (or was it 5? I forget!), 5 minute jog and 5 minute cooldown. Wednesday will be simpler - two ten-minute jogging intervals. Friday will be even simpler, but not easier - a straight 25-minute jog! :-0 Week 7, I believe, is simply three days of 25-minute jogs...but let's not think about that right now, LOL!!!!! ;-)

It was a drizzly morning (ok, POURING, but at the park it was barely even misting, thankfully) but Gypsy & I got out there nonetheless. I'm too exhausted to give a detailed report - came home, barely had time to eat my cereal before taking off for work...and once I landed at work, it was NON.STOP. All day. As in, get there at nine, work straight thru lunch and still working at 6:44 p.m. when you finally clock out. Got home a few minutes before 8:00 P.M. Yeah, that kinda day. ACK! lol! I *still* have final exams to study for, a paper to finish and a paper to start, and several pages of study notes to complete. and then study - for the aforementioned final exam tomorrow night, that I haven't studied for yet, lol. Um, so... my brain is pretty well mush by now, and I've got a long ways to go yet, LOL!

Suffice it to say that both the dog and I survived week six, day 1, yay us! :) Now if I can survive all this studying and the final exam tomorrow, that will REALLY be a miracle! ;)

Update: Couch to 5K - Week 5, Day 1

Weeks 1 thur 4 of Couch to 5k were challenging, no doubt. But Week Five is a whole new ballgame - they start ratcheting up the fun in a whole new way! Previously, each week's workout was the same all three days. Week five is a bit different - three totally different - and more challenging! - workouts. They are as follows:

DAY ONE: Five-minute warmup walk; jog 5 minutes; walk 3 minutes; jog 5 minutes; walk 3 minutes; jog 5 minutes; five-minute cooldown walk.

DAY TWO: Five-minute warmup walk; jog **8** minutes; walk 5 minutes; jog **8** more minutes; five-minute cooldown walk. (Note that is only cumulatively *one* more minute of jogging than Day 1 - just strung together in bigger intervals - helps to realize it's the same amount of time as i've done before, just structured different - so theorectially, no biggie, right? :))

DAY THREE: Five-minute warmup walk; 20-minute jog (no walking intervals); five-minute cooldown walk.

So, as you can see, it gets progressively more challenging each day this week. But the cool thing is, once I survive week five, weeks 6-9 won't seem so scary any more, right? I hope, LOL! Anyway, if you are still awake, read on to hear (or "see" rather) my dramatic tale of surviving yet another day of this crazy exercise stuff.... ;)

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Wooohoo!!!! I survived Day 1 of Week 5!!!!! :) Today was the first genuinely COOL day we've had so far. It was only 62 degrees this morning, and very low humidity. aaahhhh... MUCH better!!!!! :) Gypsy & I got to the park at 6:15 - I slept in some because I had to go by the courthouse today to get my notary public certification renewed, which meant I didn’t have to leave the house at 7:30 in the morning (they don't open till like 8:30 or 9). I knew I could run one or two five-minute intervals (like I did last week), but wasn't so sure about how well I'd do with THREE of them to contend with, LOL!

Much to my surprise, it wasn't bad. When it came time for my third and final jog, I was startled to realize I wasn't panicking and thinking I'd never make it. I just started off and kept going. :) I was feeling so good, I even picked up the pace for a little while (but then slowed down to normal for the rest of the way, by which time I was breathing pretty hard, but not thinking death was imminent lol).

One thing I did during the whole course of today's workout was use a trick they taught us in the Riders' Edge motorcycle safety course: LOOK WHERE YOU WANT TO GO. Don't focus on/stare at the ground or the pothole in the road ("target fixation," I think the term was...something like that), because if you do, that's where the bike will go even if you don't want it to. (Yes, this is actually true... the very last thing I saw before I made myself need knee surgery, was the ground, lol!) Instead, focus on where you WANT to go, and you will go there. Kinda Zen-ish, but true.. So, that's the technique I used to try to survive my 5-minute jogs. I'd focus on a lamp-post or a sign on the fence where I wanted to run to, and kept myself zeroed in on that..and got there. Then focused on my next goal...and got there. Not as fast as I wanted, but I got there nonetheless.


I'm still REALLY slow. Three laps around this track is one mile. I was hoping that during my five-minute jogging intervals, I could complete one full loop (which would give me a time of 15 mins/mile - pathetic, but immensely better than I could do five weeks ago, lol). Well, not quite there yet. I *almost* made it around one full loop in five minutes - another 45 - 60 seconds and it woulda been a full loop. Which is some better than last week, so there's progress! :) If I keep plugging away at the time/distance, the speed will improve over time. Not worried about it particularly much; each day brings improvements of some sort, so it's all good!!! :-)

I did find myself wondering how on earth I was gonna handle day 2's two, eight-minute runs (but still not nearly worried about them as much as I am FRIDAY - the BIG 20-MINUTES-STRAIGHT JOG!) ack! But all I gotta do is show up, and keep pushing forward, and it'll all come together. :-)

So, I survived, and the doggie survived. :) [Which reminds me....When hubby went to the store last night, he bought Gypsy "High Performance" dog food, in keeping with her new athletic status as Jogger Dog, LOL. :) ]

So...week five, day one, DONE. As Jason & Grant say at the end of EVERY "Ghost Hunters" episode.... "ON TO THE NEXT!"