If I do say so myself, yesterday's run was awesome! Tony and I had plans to go out for drinks/dinner with Jay, and I was working from home, so I decided in the afternoon to go and run by myself. I was worried that we wouldn't get around to running yesterday, and I really want to keep with the schedule of every other day. Yes, I could have pushed it off until today, but I know that delaying by even one day could be catastrophic. Once you let one day slide, it's easy for them all to go. If I want to establish a schedule, then I have to be adamant about sticking to it. So, I got all of my gear, and headed to the gym by myself.

I wasn't sure going in exactly how long to shoot for. My previous run had been hard, so I thought that if I was going to be ambitious I should shoot for one more minute of running, and that would probably suffice. I need to straddle the delicate line of providing myself with training sessions that challenge me each time, but that don't break me (mentally or physically). I've heard that it's good to switch up hard and easy runs, but I guess I just always want to feel like I've improved in some way and that I've pushed myself a bit further. I need to learn how to temper this with what my body can reasonably handle so that I don't injure myself.

During yesterday's run, I feel like I learned about two different ways a run can be difficult: 1) physically; 2) mentally. My previous run was the former - I felt tired early on in the run, not necessarily on a cardio front, but it was hard to keep my legs going. There wasn't any pain, it was just physically demanding. Yesterday's run was the latter - the time I was attempting to run felt daunting, and the period between 5 minutes to 20 minutes of running seemed to stretch on forever. My body felt good the entire time - my breathing stayed even, I didn't really overheat, my legs were strong - so the battle this time was all in my head. Thankfully I'm stubborn enough that I can just push myself onward to my goal, and that's what I did... because yesterday, I ran for 25 minutes straight! I kept my speed constant for the most part @ 4 mph (max incline of 3), although in the last minute, I jacked it up to 4.5 mph just to push myself to the very end and get all my energy out. I wanted to see what 4.5 mph felt like, because eventually I'm going to have to run a that speed for a much longer period of time. It definitely felt faster, but doable. I felt like I could have kept going after the 25 minute mark, but I decided that I had run enough that day, and I didn't want to risk burning out or an injury of any kind. In the end, I covered 1.95 miles!

In the last 5 minutes of my run, I essentially lied to myself, saying "just 2 minutes more... you can do 2 more minutes! That's nothing!". Every time a minute passed, the 2 minute countdown began again. I don't know how it is that we can lie so effectively to ourselves in times like that, but it works!

After my run, I was tired and sweaty, but I felt great. After my 22 minute run, I was worried that 30 minutes would be too much for me to handle, but now I feel confident that I will reach that goal within a week's time. I think my next goal will be to try to run for 27 minutes total. Tony is going to do his run today, and I will go to the gym with him, but I will save that goal for tomorrow's run. Today I have promised that my workout will be easy so that I give my body time to recover.

Oh, and to top it off, when Tony and I went out last night, instead of driving, we took our bikes! The weather was beautiful, and the ride did both of us good. I can't wait to move to the new condo, where it will be so much easier to walk and bike to things!

Tony warned me that today's run would be more difficult than our last one, and he was definitely right! I wasn't expecting it be to quite as grueling as I ultimately found it, but about half way through my alloted run time, I began to doubt myself.

I originally set out to just replicate what I last did (namely 20 minutes of running at 4 mph), but I wound up changing my mind right before my run. I decided to up the ante a little and pushed my total running time up to 22 minutes (@ 4 mph). It was hella hard, but in the end I did it! I ran for 22 mph @ 4 mph (the last minute I actually went all out and boosted the speed to 4.2 mph), covering a grand total of 1.89 miles of tread. During running, my maximum incline was 3.

To keep myself motivated during running, I've been listening to audiobooks on my ipod. I won't lie: the current novel I'm listening to is "Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer, the third book in a vampire series aimed at young adults. It is not good writing, and pretty cheesy and bad, yet I cannot overcome my curiosity to know what happens. I'm limiting myself to only visiting the story when I run, so that I keep up with running and don't back out of it. Despite the poor prose, I find the story sufficiently engaging that it acts as an appropriate motivator. I'm not sure what I'll move on to once I finish the book/series (there is one more book, which will be released in August), but I'm sure I'll find something else that is fluffy enough for these runs!

Not too sure what my goal is for Thursday's run. I'm thinking of just trying to boost my run time by 1 minute, but we'll see how things go!

Back on Track

After a several-week self-imposed running hiatus, I finally got back on track yesterday. Or to be more specific, I got back on the treadmill. As much as I was hoping this time around to become an outdoor runner, I am just too wary of a potentially recurring injury to hit the street any time soon. It's important to me to keep active so that I can get fit, and if I have to keep benching myself because of injuries and pain, obviously I need to find a better way to achieve my goal.

I was actually impressed with how much "savings" my body had done in terms of preserving my fitness and all that from when I last ran. Yesterday I did 5 minutes walking (warm up), 20 minutes running (at 4 mph), and then 5 minutes walking cool down. I wasn't sure that I could run for a whole 20 minutes (given that I barely managed to do 3 minutes running outside, and back in my more distant treadmill days, I generally topped out around 25 minutes as it was), but I told myself I would run until the countdown timer said I had 10 minutes left, and could then take a break if I needed. Instead, I pushed myself for the last five minutes, so that I did make it for the whole 20 minutes.

I felt really good about myself afterwards, and not just because I ran for 20 minutes non-stop. When I was at my best on the treadmill, I could maybe run at 4.5 mph tops (and not for the entire time), so starting at 4.0 mph and not having it be colossally painful (or impossible) felt pretty good in my book. Also, I did a program on the treadmill called "forest walk", which introduces incline shifts throughout your 30 min run, which enhances the difficulty. Tony said he was impressed to see I got up to an incline of 3; to be honest, I noted that the treadmill claimed the incline was changing, but I never noticed a difference! I guess the one good side to running on all those hills outside (or just outside in general, where nothing is completely flat), is that the treadmill really does feel so much easier! I never played with the incline before, so that's another way in which I've improved as a runner.

Clearly my goals for running on the treadmill will have to be different than those I held for myself outside (clearly the time spent running is not going to be something I shoot for). Ultimately I would like to be able to run for 30 minutes straight, which I think I'm pretty close to achieving - 20 minutes felt good yesterday, but I expect to be running for 30 minutes in 2 weeks time, if not sooner. Once I hit that, I will then focus on upping my running speed (and therefore distance). Right now I will keep things steady at 4 mph, but my goal is to eventually advance to running a 10 minute mile, meaning I will need to hit a running speed of 6 mph.

So, I guess my new running goals are:

1) Increase overall running time to 30 minutes (4 mph)
2) Run 1 10-minute mile (hit running speed of 6 mph)
3) Run 2 10-minute miles
4) Run 3 10-minute miles (run at 6 mph for full 30 minute)

I think these follow a logical enough progression that I will be able to tailor my routine to meet them each in turn. I will likely need to have mini-goals in between, but for now, I'll focus on hitting Goal 1, and then take it from there.

Oh, and best of all - even though running on the treadmill isn't for everyone, at no point during my run did I feel any pain in my left shin! That's enough to convince me that treadmill running is the way I need to go for the next while.