Wednesday, April 11, 2007

500 Workouts - 11% completed

So, yesterday afternoon marked workout #55. It seems such a paltry sum when you consider that my goal is 500! 444 more to go! (I completed another one this morning.) UGH!

You would think that after 56 workouts, I would find some rhyme or reason to how hard or easy a workout is. Unfortunately, I have not found that to be the case. One day I will be excited to get to the gym and when I get there, I will find that running for more than 2 minutes in a row will be a feat I am not able to accomplish. (When I started back in December, I couldn't run for more than 30 seconds without feeling like I was going to die, so 2 minutes represents quite a bit of progress for me.) Another day I will be exhausted from staying up too late or not feeling like I had had enough to eat and be dreading going to the gym.

That was the case yesterday afternoon. Troy and I walked to the gym from his house (about 1.25 miles) and the whole way there I was feeling tired and hungry. I was sure that it was going to be an excruciating workout. But when I got there and hopped on the treadmill to run, I found it to be really easy and actually felt pretty good! I generally do a 5 minute warm-up of walking then intervals of 2 minutes running/3 minutes walking to recover until I hit about 35 minutes total. Yesterday I started running after only 1 minute of warm-up walking since we had already walked to the gym. I ran for 2 minutes, which flew by. Then about 1 1/2 minutes into the 3 minute recovery I started running again because I felt rested enough and wanted to push myself a bit. While I only stayed on the treadmill for 15 minutes, (the gym was closing and I wanted to get the weight-lifting portion of my workout done) I ran 8 minutes of it! That's over half. I'm sure to an experienced runner that doesn't sound like much, but for me that's a big deal. I'm generally pretty happy if I run 1/3 of my total time. 1/2 is HUGE!

So, the point of all of my ranting is that I can't seem to figure out when it's going to be a good running day and when it's going to be a bad running day. The good days seems to be coming more frequently, so perhaps that's because I'm getting used to it and it just doesn't feel so hard anymore, but I'm not counting my chickens yet!

At the end of the month I will be participating in the Race for the Cure. (http://www.komenindy.org) It's only a 5k, but I'm using it as a practice run for the Indianapolis Mini Marathon 5k that I am participating in on May 5, 2007. Wish me luck and I hope it's a good running day!

2 comments:

kieron said...

what gym do you go to that's so close?

Heather said...

Troy and I joined a gym that is in the building that I work in downtown. So far, we've tried to get up and go about 3-4 times a week. It will be easier to get up at 4 am, drive to his house and then go to the gym once I have less obligations in the evenings this summer.

I used to belong to the Y over near Irvington back when I met Troy.

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