Category: Home & Family

Day 4: Oh boy…

Today, the iterations changed to 90 seconds of running and 2 minutes of walking. That extra 30 seconds of running in each iteration (thankfully six instead of eight this time) scared me. I had always been at the “Oh Man, 3 more seconds, I can do it… oh man oh man…” point last week. Now we were adding another 30 seconds to each round? Well, I survived it. And since Jack couldn’t find his earbuds, I ran without my headset and we talked as we ran. Or, rather, he talked. I made vague grunting noises from time to time. (“Grunt once for yes…”) On our final walk, we both pant-grunted Viva la Vida by Coldplay. We had gotten to that state of silly.

All in all, I survived it and I am starting to realize that I am getting stronger and I am able to push farther through this. It’s a wonderful feeling. It helped immensely that the weather was absolutely glorious this morning. It was a joy to be outside in it and to be chatting with Jack as we went along. I’m looking forward to Thursday’s run!

I had to skip Friday. It was raining and while I fully expect to not care later in this process, I didn’t want to run in the rain as a beginner. So I went Saturday instead. This was my first solo run as well as Jack had had a friend over and I decided to let them sleep in. The weather was glorious and everything felt great. Nothing was hurting (at first) and I had good energy. I worked hard to make sure I was landing mid-foot and not doing a heel-to-toe thing. It felt natural so I suspect that was what I was doing previously (a friend had suggested it may have been why I had pain with my hip flexors on Wednesday’s run).

After the half-way point, I began to get the burning in the back of my calves again but it was not anything I couldn’t handle. The final iteration of running was pretty hard work but I pulled it out and felt great. So far, so good.

I was supposed to run today (Monday) but since we went to Six Flags with Crew 66 yesterday and I had a nearly 14K step day (and a good chunk of it in wet shoes/socks thanks to a water ride) I decided to give myself a buy and will start week 2 on Tuesday morning instead.