Last night's run was technically supposed to be the end of week 1's training regime, even though we've been doing this for 1.5 weeks. Part of the reason for our tardy progress is because we redid one of our run sessions early on because it had been so challenging the first day we tackled it, and we wanted to be sure we were in a good place before moving on. The other reason is that Tony's parents were here for 4 days last week, which while fun and a positive experience, effectively killed our running program for those days. Still, I want to point out that after they left, we promptly got back into our routine, so good for us!

The run program for yesterday was: walk 5 minutes, run 2 & walk 1 for 21 minutes, walk 4 minutes. (The runs always add up to 30 minutes). A few modifications were made to our overall, which I think we're gonna keep for the future. First, Rory was being a holy terror when we got home, and actually wound up peeing on Tony while sitting in his lap while Tony was putting on his shoes for our run as well as our feather duvet (it was old and we have been planning to replace it, but still!). He's always had bathroom issues, such that for the past two weeks I've been limiting his water intake to 1/2 cup at night, and a little bit (no more than that) after coming in from our walks/runs. The night previous, Tony had given him more water with his dinner, and while I don't know for certain that that's to blame for the huge accident Rory then had, we're definitely going to be limiting his water intake from now on (and getting peed on has put Tony fully on board with this as well!). I've monitored him since I've cut down his water, and he hasn't shown any warning signs of dehydration, so from now on Rory will be getting no more than 3/4 cup of water per day!

Anywho, because he had been so terrible, we locked him in his crate as punishment and didn't let him come on the big run with us (all the while ensuring he knew that Emmy, who had not misbehaved was coming). Now, I had originally been the one to suggest we incorporate our dog walks with our runs, but last night's run was so much easier without Rory that Tony and I have agreed that we'll stick to taking the dogs on our long walks, but we'll do the run days canine-free. At least for now, I have to focus so much on just keeping myself moving and breathing that I really can't have the added issue of focusing on keeping Rory going and out of the path of cars.

The other thing we changed was to just run primarily along Fairfax Ave, which is fairly flat. We ran all the way down to Hillsboro Village, and then turned around and made our way back to the apartment, retracing our steps. [Click here to see the route we ran!] We clearly overshot our 30 minutes exercise time (instead it was almost 50 min), but in time that route will probably fit 30 minutes nicely when we're running for longer intervals. Into our third running interval, my calves really started to burn, which has been the main problem I've been experiencing since starting to run outside. I'm fairly certain it's not due to my stride lengths being too long, as I actually tend to take fairly small steps while running. I suspect it's simply due to my calf muscles being ridiculously weak and really being affected by the running. I actually had a moment earlier in the day when walking to the scanner when just walking up a hill caused my calves to burn and tighten up. I think we'll have to keep to our boring, mostly flat route until we reach our goal of running 30 minutes straight. Then we can increase a new degree of difficulty into the runs by changing up the route so that more extreme hills get added.

As far as the run went, I felt really good! The first two reps were not bad at all, then I started get some calf tightening/fatigue, which may have gone away by the last 2 reps, or it's possible that the calf issues were merely eclipsed by the cardiovascular strain. I think I actually began to pick up my pace at the end and really pushed myself, which is why I definitely needed the walk periods to catch my breath. If I had kept a constant pace the whole time, I think I would have been fine. I also consciously incorporated Taryn's technique of tricking myself during the running bursts near the end, by which I picked a landmark and focussed on running to it, assuring myself the whole time that when I reached it our running time would be done. Of course, this was rarely the case, so I'd just pick a new landmark and run for that until our two minutes really were up. Surprisingly, it really helped and gave me the little boost I needed to keep going when the running got tough. I also tried to pump my arms more and focus on those movements when going up the last few hills, and that also seemed to help too! So: thanks Taryn!

The ending to our walk was a bit of a low note as we ran into my advisor out for a walk with his daughter. I hate seeing when I'm at school, so running into him on my free time was unpleasant (though he himself was in a good enough mood. I will give him credit for that!). Ironically, he could remember that we have two dogs (despite us only having one of them with us), but cannot remember Tony's name... Anyway, the whole experience emphasized to Tony and me that we really need to move, because right now we live for to close to my advisor for comfort. When we got home we did some pretty thorough apartment hunting online. Of course one of the properties we found was actually directly across the street from my advisor, so we immediately struck that from the roster!

Finally, neither of us were extremely hungry when we got home, so I popped some spinach&cheese ravioli on to boil along with two chicken&apple sausages, and then let them cool in the sink. I later mixed them with some baby spinach leaves, tomato, feta, and red onion, and tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette, mimicking a salad L'Ell and I ate in Edinburgh at the Elephant Cafe. We paired it with a slice of garlic bread, and it proved to be a light but filling meal. Having the pasta tossed in there helped sate our starch craving, but we ultimately ate far less of the 'heavy stuff' then we otherwise would have had I just made an outright pasta meal. I definitely think that'll be a meal that will feature heavily on our dinner rotation in the future.

Ultimately, I'm feeling good about tomorrow's run, which is as follows: walk 5 minutes, run 3 & walk 1 for 20 minutes, walk 5. This increased running time doesn't seem that daunting (and technically it's only one full minute longer of running than what we did yesterday), and once we hit that, we'll be so much closer to my mini-goal of being able to run for 5-minutes non-stop! Yes, I'm very much like the tortoise, but isn't that who ultimately won the race?