I could sew do that!

By admin 　http://icouldsewdothat.com/archives/434

I was once a track star. Not really. I was on the track team, but I was not the fastest and rarely won any races. I ran sprints and hurdles, namely 300M high hurdles, 110 hurdles, 200M, 400M and 800M relay. It turns out that being short is not an advantage when it comes to running fast; who knew. I did love to run though and despite my lack of speed I did win the award for prettiest over the hurdles, so there’s that.  Anyway, I flirted with running about 2 years ago when my husband decided that he was going to get up early and run in the morning. Unfortunately I am not a morning person. I’ve worked on adjusting my schedule over time to allow me to get out of bed at a decent hour to avoid making my poor daughter late for school and thus subject to detention for my slackerness, but I still don’t like it. I definitely wasn’t about to continue to drag myself out of bed to suffer, just getting up and ready was torture enough as it was. Fast forward to last month… My work is again sending out tons of emails about the Komen Race for the Cure. They are even giving away prizes; and that is a mighty nice looking Under Armour shirt. All I have to do is run a 5k you say? Sold! So, I registered to race. It was a timely announcement anyway as my Step-father’s sister passed away only weeks before from breast cancer in her early 30′s and my Mother-in-Law just survived breast cancer surgery and following radiation treatments. My best friend’s mother also has survived breast cancer and she is now a high risk for developing it herself. So, I decided to run. What the hay, everyone was born to run right? This is what our ancestors did for food for heaven’s sake. Surely an athletic, trim and healthy (ha ha!) 30 something like myself could run a measly 3+ miles. HA! Despite my athleticism I found that running is still a miserable, slogging, painful experience for me and I have only a few weeks before I run my race for the cure. (BTW, click the link and donate to my suffering for a good cause please). My first attempt at running again ended in painful shin splints, side stitches and general misery, so I decided to look for help. I read that the new school thought on running shoes is that too much cushion is bad for you. My $20 shoes from the local warehouse club with marshmallows for soles probably weren’t going to cut it. I switched over to my Gola classics which seemed to help me. I was able to run without feeling like I had been beaten with a baseball bat the next day, so that was good. Next, I needed to train to run the full 5k. My girlfriend indicated that anyone could do it, even my untrained self. I however beg to differ; clearly she has not seen me dragging my sorry self around the block looking like I may puke or pass out at any moment. As a quick back story, I recently upgraded my old 2004 cell phone to the new iPhone 4 and love the apps. Naturally I looked for a good running application and found the perfect one. It’s called Couch to 5k. It can take anyone, even those who have never run, or still hate it and make you a 5k racer. I love it! It lets you listen to your own music and even tweets your peeps that you’ve finished a new stage each time you run it. (This helps if you have motivator friends who track your progress but can’t actually run with you). The Couch to 5k program or C25K takes 9 weeks to get you in 5k form. It will teach you to increase your running gradually to the point that you can run 5k or 30 minutes straight. Ambitious? Yes, but it works. As an example, week 1 day 1 (each week is broken into 3 running sessions) has you do a 5 minute warm-up, followed by alternating 60 seconds of jogging with 90 seconds of walking for 20 minutes. Even I can do that! Today I will move on to week 5 session 2 (5.2) and I have in store for me today a 5 min. warm-up followed by an 8 min jog, then a 5 min walk and finishing up with an 8 min jog. Crazy right? The best part is that I’ll do it easily and still have energy to run more. I love this app!  I’ve been running regularly for a few weeks now and I really love it. It feels good, its a great stress reliever and I’ve already lost 5 lbs that I wasn’t expecting. It’s certainly slimming down my physique, which in my case is a good thing. I tend to have a stocky, muscle-bound appearance because of the action sports and weight lifting that I do, so this adds a nice balance. I’ll post some regular updates as I move closer to my race date and share my experiences as I grow into a real live runner. The best part about running I think is that I can do it anywhere at any time. I don’t really need a of special equipment and I don’t have to drive anywhere; it’s beautiful. So, if I can run, so can you. So get out there and pound the pavement!