Week 1; Day 1

If you haven't yet - please read the previous post "Can An Overweight Couch/Desk-Potato Become a Runner?" before you read this one or it won't make much sense.

Last night R and I got home, found something for dinner, but instead of eating I grabbed my dog, a stopwatch, and a flashlight and went for my first run (ok, fast walk ;)).

The first week (every other day for three days) is this:

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

I also read about some runner stretches to do, so I did these in my house and then went out. I did the first 5 minutes at a pretty fast walking pace. Faster than I would ever think of walking normally. I went about .3 of a mile (or 1 loop) at this pace in the 5 min warm-up time.

~~~ I live on a street shaped like a lollipop. There is a straight road that starts the neighborhood, which breaks into two roads that relink again, making a complete circle. My house is where the "stick" meets the "top candy circle" of the lollipop. The loop is right around .3 of a mile so I know, if I walk 4 times around, i've walked slightly more than a mile.~~~

The first and second 60 seconds of jogging were pretty easy. When I got to the third I was breathing pretty hard and thought about skipping one of the jogging intervals. I did jog a little in the third but mostly walked. I figured it would be ok to push myself a little, nothing hurt yet, so for the rest of the 60 second jogging intervals I jogged as much as I felt my lungs could handle (about 20 to 30 seconds) and walked as fast as I could for the rest of the time.

My dog was barely panting ;)

I finished out the time - going a little over the 20 mins - total time out there was about 30 mins. We went around the loop five times, so approximately 1.5 miles.

When I came into the house I was breathing hard but felt good. I probably could have kept going. I did the stretches again and they felt pretty good actually.

I was really happy I went. I am still happy I went and I kind of want to go again tonight. But, I don't want to discourage myself either - I'm going to stick to the schedule. I think, since I'm not able to do the full 60 seconds of jogging yet, I'll probably stay on "week 1" at least one extra week. I'll have to see how it goes.

I'll be "running" again on Saturday!