Week 5 and... I'm a QUITTER.

I haven't gone running since 5/19 and I feel guilty about it. I also feel sad because I really was happy I was going. Not to mention proud of myself.

Week 5 - Day 1 was on 5/15. The instruction was: Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then: Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes); Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes); Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes); Walk 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes); Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes). I did well. I did not cut any of the jogs short. It was tough but I was easily able to push myself for the longer jogs. I didn't feel quite so uncomfortable as I had been. It's been so long now that I don't remember how far I went but it was at least 6 loops / 1.8 miles.

Week 5 - Day 2 was on 5/17. The instruction was: Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then: Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes); Walk 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes); Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes). I did much better than I had anticipated on this. Again, I don't remember exactly how far I went but I did all that was required plus an additional 5 minutes "cool down" at the end.

Week 5 - Day 3 was on 5/19. The instruction was: Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog two miles (or 20 minutes) with no walking. Holy crap. A 20 min jog ALREADY?? I totally didn't think I could do this. I was prepared to do some sort of version of day 2 over again if I just couldn't hack it. I was sure I wouldn't be able to do it.

But, I DID do it. I jogged for 20 minutes without stopping. Sure, snails and turtles were lapping me but I jogged the entire time!!

I went a total of 1.3 miles jogging and around 2 miles all together with the warm up and cool down walking. I came inside and told R, who was sitting on the couch watching some show on TV that I wished I was watching, that I just jogged 1.3 miles straight! He gave me an obligatory "yay! good job!" I was so proud of myself. I truly never believed I could get to that point.

AND THEN I QUIT *queue needle-being-dragged-off-moving-record noise*

Ugh. I am so annoyed at myself. And, it's proving incredibly hard to get back on the horse.

5/21 was the next day to run and it just happened to be our anniversary (4 years :) I'm planning on posting about this separately!) So, I used the fact that I didn't want to skip out on R on our anniversary night to go running as an excuse. Plus I could go the next night, right? Wrong. 5/22 is R's birthday. I again used the excuse that I shouldn't go out and leave R on this night either. Besides, I could go on Saturday 5/23. Um... nope. We ended up going somewhere special the night of 5/23 to celebrate our anniversary (will post about this too) and I was able to easily justify an excuse not to go yet again.

It just descended from there. Once I start making excuses and procrastinating it's all over. Really, this affects all areas of my life so I'm not surprised it happened. I was doing my best to keep it from happening but then I slipped.

I want to start again. I'm not sure what week I should begin on now that I've had so much time off. I'm not sure when I can pick myself up and force myself to get back out there. Maybe this post will help.

(p.s. Thanks so much to everyone for your comments on my last post. I've been doing pretty well ignoring it so far and I'm sure all the crazy emotions from the news will fade with time.)