5K Linkup April 9, 2013

It's 5K Challenge time!

I was worried about this post this week...the reason being is that it's been quite a struggle for me to improve the past few times out and I was getting discouraged.  And I mean, pissed off-crying-discouraged.  I am in Week 5 of the C25K, and it was kicking my ass.  I could not do it and it made me angry.

I had no idea what kind of a competitor I am and it's not that I want to beat anyone else...I want to beat ME.  I have found this inner beast within myself since I began my journey and I can't believe how strong she is.  Mentally and physically I am not the same person that I was when I began 17 months ago.

Then came this challenge...if you ever want to know what you're capable of, begin running.  Is that weird to say??  Honest to goodness, in my case, it is true.  In the past, if anyone asked me if I wanted to run, I would recoil violently and squish up my face in disgust and say, "NO!!  Why in the HELL would I EVER want to do that??  Have you ever actually looked at a runner??  No runner EVER looks like they are having fun!!"  And following those statements, I would go on a rant about how bad I'VE HEARD running could be for your body - your joints get all jacked up and seriously, WHY would anyone want to just RUN?!!

Now?  Well, I'm a runner.  I can officially say this because just last night, I ran a WHOLE mile straight...in fact, I ran 1.1 miles, thankyouverymuch.

But here's the cool thing...I was getting discouraged this last week because I was trying to do too much too fast.  Instead of staying on my C25K path, I decided that I could just do what I wanted to and even though I didn't have any distance under my belt, somehow I thought it would be pretty badass to try to shave off some time.  THIS was a bad idea.  I mean B.A.D.  I couldn't do it.  I was dying after just a little distance.  My heart rate was so high that I couldn't catch my breath and it was awful, I HATED it.  I seriously began doubting if I'd be ready for my June 1st race.

Then, one of my training buddies sent me this great article from RunnersWorld(dot)com and it MAGICALLY changed things!!  Basically, what the article states is that if you are running, you should be running at only 55-65% of your maximum heart rate.  And I wasn't...I was running very damn NEAR my maximum heart rate and that's why it was so hard.  What did all of this mean for me?  I had to slow things down.  If you have been following my 5K Challenge journey, you know that I like to call what I do "wogging" - a combo of walking & jogging because I'm not at all fast.  NOW, I had to go even SLOWER.  But guess what?  It freaking worked.

So for the next few weeks, I'm going to work my training this way.  And THEN I'll see if I can work on shaving some time off - right now, I'm not going to worry about how long it's going to take.  My whole plan all along was just to be able to run the whole thing - I have no idea where I got it up my butt to try to do it fast.  But let me tell you, I have tossed that idea right out the window.

BTW - that mile felt amazing - my first runner's high - yayyyyy!

I love this quote; it's SO me and damn if I'm not proud to shout it to the world: