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!