I've been in the learn to run clinic for over a month now and the run portions of our run/walk combo are getting longer.
Way, way longer than I'd have ever thought I could run or jog or shuffle along. I mean, I look ahead in the schedule and apparently in a month or so, we'll be running for ten minutes straight. My brain tells me there is absolutely no way I can do this.
But, my brain also told me when I saw the first half of the schedule that there was no way I'd be able to run for five minutes straight, and I have, so I'm pretty sure my brain might be wrong on this one.
My body, however? I'm not so sure of. I'm doing pretty well in terms of aches and pains and have been given some extra strengthening exercises and if one more physio tells me I have to strengthen my core I may just start to believe them. (No, that was supposed to be funny Physio Man, I promise I'll do my exercises.)
But the cardio is hard.
Sometimes.
It's weird, because each week, we go up a minute and the run I do with the clinic group is fine. Not easy, necessarily, but fine. But then when I do my practice runs it's not always as easy.
I've run by myself and had a difficult time, I've run with S and had a difficult time (yesterday she was literally running circles around me, I just couldn't find any energy), but I've also had some ok times by myself and S and I run together on clinic nights so I never know what it is that's making things harder than the last time.
In general, as long as I can keep my mental status positive, I'm doing well. But if I start to feel like I'm slow or holding someone back or something like that it just gets harder, so a lot of it is me telling myself I'm doing fine and that slowness/speed isn't important, it's just important that I'm doing it.
So, the short version of the update is that I'm running a gazillion minutes and then walking for a minute and I'm doing that a thousand times. Or maybe six.
Sometimes it just feels like more.
But I am interested to see how the next few weeks go and how my body reacts and holds up and how my cardio (hopefully) improves.
And I'm interested to see if I continue to discover just how stubborn I can be when I set my mind to something.
Which, so far, has been very.
3 comments:
That's pretty impressive! I've been telling myself for a couple years now that I want to run a marathon....someday. But I haven't done a darn thing to get started. This is inspiring. ~~Marie
As to the core business - I agree, it was only this year that I got serious about it and I've been doing a yoga core class once a week to help that issue out. As to the brain revolt thing well dear, I would say just keep at it - just keep plugging forward - listening to music helps sometimes for me, other times if I am really struggling - and I find that it is more so when I run on my own, I turn off my timer and I run until the end of a song, or the next big light, take a few moments and then do it again. Sometimes when it is really hard just break it down into smaller chunks.
I think, Marie, when you have such a huge, wonderful goal like a marathon it must seem intimidating to start! But, this learn to run thing has been great, I'd totally recommend one :)
It's totally a love/hate thing SimplyStac! Totally!
Yeah, SnP, I can get overwhelmed if I don't break it down into little chunks. But, yes, brain revolt rocks! ;)
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