I Think I Need to Change My Profile

I say in my profile that I'm allergic to exercise, but actually I'm not anymore. As a matter of fact I am turning into a jogger. I never thought it could happen, especially at my age, but it has. I started doing this Couch to 5K program in June because I thought it might help deal with the middle aged spread that I still had despite dropping a lot of weight this past year. My initial goal was to get to the point where I could actually run a mile (not the 5K the program was saying they could get you to in 8 weeks). At that point I couldn't run a tenth of a mile without getting winded and stopping to catch my breath. Well... I still haven't run a mile without walking breaks yet, but I am now regularly running over a mile total three days a week. Yesterday I did our neighborhood loop (about .7 mile) with only three minute walking interval. Tomorrow I'm scheduled to do two 8 minute jog intervals with one 5 minute walk in the middle. We'll see how that goes.

What's surprising about all this is that I'm actually enjoying it. I don't necessarily enjoy the burning lung sensation, but I do enjoy the challenge of it and I am actually finding the first part of every jogging interval to be absolutely exhilarating. I am beginning to understand why runners run. If this gives me nothing more than some insight into a whole group of people whom I never understood at all before it will be worth it. I used to shake my head in disbelief when my daughter said she preferred jogging to walking. In fact, I've already gained physically as well. Not only has my endurance increased, I have dropped some inches in my middle, so I guess this interval training thing really does work. Now if I can just get some of the more jiggly parts to stop jiggling...

This activity is helping me enjoy summer in a whole new way. I get to see whose flowers are blooming, how people's gardens are doing, what birds we have in the neighborhood, whose got little kids running around outside. I'm no longer stuck in the house, I'm actually out there seeing the life of the neighborhood. People smile at me, they wave to me, they say hello. I don't stop for a chat because I'm on a mission, but I do smile back, wave back, and yell out a hello back.

Next challenge to myself is to see whether I can jog a whole rosary... I love multi-tasking. Yesterday I prayed about half of a rosary while standing next to the hole in the fence my daughter's horses had gone through earlier in the morning. I was keeping the one who had been put back in in while my husband went to retrieve her mother. It seemed like a good use of time to pray the Rosary instead of just standing there. I finished it up while walking over to the other field to find the hole in the fence they made to get in with the other horses. Then I cobbled the top strand of that fence back together and went back to tell my husband where that hole was. He meanwhile spent the whole forenoon catching horses and fixing fences. I'm not sure that he was able to multi-task at all.

If you're interested in interval training checkout www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml There's a whole training schedule there as well as a message board and lots of other cool information.