Better

I graduated today!!

Today I did my final run for the C25K workout. Now I can run jog for 30 minutes straight without stopping. This is something I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to do? I’m pretty sure I never thought there was a good reason to be running for this long, which means I probably never attempted it. 

C25K is a 9 week training program, but I probably took 15 weeks to finish due to my laziness, the weather, and my travel schedule. I am SO HAPPY to be done though! I sort of never thought I would make it but I did. I remember that time I thought I couldn’t run for 18 minutes, or 20 minutes. Now I can do 30! 

I am still somewhat of a bad runner. I mean, I am jogging pretty slowly, averaging between 13 and 14 minute miles on my good days. I am not stretching before and after my runs, and I have ankle injuries I am nursing. Today’s run was a bit painful. Even though I didn’t run for 2-3 days, no sooner than I started to jog, my legs just felt achy all over. I don’t know if it was the weather or my lack of stretching but….it felt like my femurs were trying to quit on me. 

I am mulling over the idea of racing. Well, running a race. A friend from my Haiti trip posted some info about a 5K coming up which supports her grad program and medical research. It’s really informal (it’s a walk/run), and she said the goody bag is really good so I should try it out. I am a little afraid though. I almost don’t want to go by myself but I also don’t want to tell my friends to come. I need to stop caring what other people think and just do what’s best for my health. Either way, I have a few more days to think it over. 

Now that I finished the program, I need to focus on getting a better time and staying active. I honestly feel like my running time is not going to get better until I lose more weight. The pain in my legs made it seem like my body is saying, “Look. We can’t be carrying all this weight around when we’re running. Lose some poundage, then we’ll talk.” Sigh. My eating habits are a MESS right now (due to stress), so I don’t feel confident in being able to change this as I did before. I am going to pray about it though. I really need to see some improvement in my diet so I can make a solid attack on my unhealthy lifestyle. 

Besides the 5K race I may or may not run, I was thinking of moving on to the Bridge to 10K app, which is a program designed by the folks who did the C25K app. It’s only 6 weeks long, and looks doable. I guess I just can’t figure out should I work on speed for my 5K or continue to work on longer running endurance. I’m not even sure what is best right now considering my injuries. 

On my next run I am going to go back to one of the old C25K workouts and run intervals, but just run them faster. I mean the smaller intervals, like run hard for 30 seconds, then walk 90 seconds. I think the C25K app is great for helping time intervals for you.

Actually, I might do both: faster intervals and the 10K training program, then see how it goes. Glad I wrote this out so I could think it through :) 

Happy running!

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Winning, Running, Injuries, Foods and Godly Bodies

Today I discovered I won a $25 iTunes gift card!!!!! All because whenever I tweet about my C25K workouts using the @c25Kapp, I am entered into their weekly contest. I WON THIS WEEK. How awesome. Just the other day I was feeling like a lame for tweeting my workouts (I find tweets of every checkin on foursquare, miso, get glue really super annoying), but HEY HEY now there are some benefits to this here tweetin. I dunno what I am gonna blow my iTunes winnings on, but it will probably be a bunch of apps or something.

I’m on Week 7 of the C25K workout and I am able to do the full 25 minute run for realsies. I still have these negative thoughts before and during my runs, but they are less intense now. What helps motivate me is that I have been training on the same path all these months, and all I do is reflect on the times when I could barely run the path. Remember when I couldn’t run longer than 30 seconds? Well now I’m doing 10 minutes without blinking. My pace is pretty slow, but I am still running nonetheless.

I have an ankle injury. Each day I run, my ankle hurts for the rest of the day. Kind of like a sprain, but mild. If I try to rotate my ankle, the muscles on the top side of my left ankle hurts. It usually only hurts the day of the run though. I started stretching it but my ankle still hurts from yesterday’s run, to the point where I’ve got a slight limp. I’m pretty sure it’s because my weight and the increased impact from running is stressing it. I thought it wasn’t getting worse, but today is the first non-run day where it still hurts and I am still limping. I thought about icing it. Sigh. I need to be careful, I do not have health insurance for this.

My diet is way out of control. I’ve been eating junk. Ramen. Pizza. Drinking soda. Pints of ben and jerry’s. It’s been crazy. So. I’ve been stressed. And strapped for cash. Though, I’m sure if I put my mind to it I could afford my fresh food. I’ve just been so stressed lazy and have been looking for comfort. I gotta get off this carb-mobile and back to my veggies. I buy my veggies but let them rot in the fridge. I’ve gained a little weight but not that much. Maybe 5 lbs.

One of these days my diet AND my exercise will be on the SAME page.

My church has this series starting this weekend called Bod 4 God….where we talk about honoring God with our bodies. Now, when I think of this concept I think of sex and abstinence. But…no, we’re talking about health here. So for the next 6 weeks, my pastor(s) are going to be teaching what the Bible says about health, and how to stay motivated:

• January 30 -  D: Dedication (Honoring God with My Body)
• February 6 -   I: Inspiration (Motivating Myself for a Change)
• February 13 - E: Eat (Managing My Habits)
• February 20 - E: Exercise (Managing My Habits Pt.2)
• February 26 - T: Team (Building My Support Team)
• March 6 - Seeing Myself as God Sees Me

I don’t think I have ever been to a church where they spent this much time talking about physical health. I may have heard Joel Osteen do like 2 messages on health before, but…6 whole weeks? This should be interesting. I see my health related to my faith in terms of keeping myself alive. How can I perform whatever mission God has planned for me on Earth if I abuse my body so much that I take myself out before I really needed to? I think about this a lot. I also watch too much Terminator. I look forward to this series, as well as checking out the book that I am sure this series is based on.

Until next time….

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• fitness
• health
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C25K Workout: Week 6 Day 3 - Getting Past Negative Thoughts

I’m finally starting the workouts that have no walking intervals, it’s just straight running from here on out. Today I had to run 25 minutes without stopping.

The workout before this consisted of two 10 minute intervals with 3 minutes walking in between. I actually failed it the first time. This was the first workout in this C25K plan that I did not complete as scheduled. What had happened was….in the second minute of the second interval, I got cramping in the top of my right abdomen. I thought maybe it was because I ate something right before my run or something. But, to be honest, mentally this was a difficult run. Seriously, every time I get going on difficult runs, my internal soundtrack turns into, “this is going to be super hard,” “you can’t do this,” “oh mah gawd this is the hardest run ever and you WON’T FINISH IT.”

I’ve really gotta work on the negative thoughts in my mind. It’s like they go into overdrive when I’m running. So, when the cramps wouldn’t go away, I stopped running and walked. I felt defeated, but my side hurt. After a 30 second walk, I was able to run again and finished the workout. Still, I repeated the workout the next time just to prove to myself that I could do it.

I ended up talking to Tina on the phone last week and told her about my cramping. She said that it might just be that running in the cold disrupts my breathing pattern and this causes cramping. It’s been snowing, and there’s a lot of snow and ice on the ground. I’m already freaked out by running in the snow, my breathing is probably even more inconsistent than usual. 

Tina was so encouraging though. She kept saying, “Liz, you’re a beast! You can do it! Who else on the planet is running in the snow? Not that many people. Definitely not any Black people!” Hahaha. She’s right. I need to give myself credit for even trying to be consistent.

So, today I ran my workout as planned and I did 25 minutes straight, no walking! It was 30 degrees outside, snow and ice still on the ground. I had fewer negative thoughts than usual, and I tried to replay Tina’s words and voice in my head when it got really tough. It totally worked! Way less complaining this time around.

I love my C25K iPhone app! It upgraded recently and I bought the GPS feature for it. Now I get a map of every workout. It calculates my running and walking pace, average pace, as well as the pace of each of my miles. It has some cool charts too. I’m not sure I believe my mile times though. My second mile is always faster than my first mile….which seems odd to me. I would think my first mile is the fastest because I haven’t expended much energy yet? Hmm who knows. I know my iPhone 3G is mad old and I halfway trust its GPS anyway. A cool thing I noticed was that my distance is increasing with each workout, which is awesome. It’s great that I am running for a long time without stopping, but it’s more awesome that I am increasing my distance.

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• w6d3
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• negative thoughts
• snow
• running in cold weather

Doubtful Running

So remember that post I wrote about my fear of running for 20 minutes straight? Um yeah. I TOTALLY RAN FOR 20 MINUTES STRAIGHT TODAY!!!!

It took me a few more days to get the courage to run this workout, but since I am going to Haiti in a few days, today was now or never because I am not running while in Haiti.

I really didn’t want to run. I’ve had excuse after excuse. The other day I tried to run and I let my ADD get the best of me and made some hot chocolate instead. Five minutes into my hot chocolate I remembered I was on my way to run. Oops. It was dusk by then, so yet another day had eluded me.

Today marks a very important day for me and I really needed to clear my head. I haven’t published a post I wrote weeks ago about how I pray/talk to God when I am running (some day I will post it), but today I felt I needed to get a praying run in ASAP.

The weather was cold as usual, but mid-30s temps seem like child’s play. Oh, it’s 34 degrees? I got this.

You don’t know how much I had to argue with myself during this run. It was so ridiculous that by minute 2, I was already telling myself I wouldn’t be able to run for 4 minutes, knowing good and well I’ve run 8 minute intervals before. I spent the first five minutes of the run allowing several negative thoughts to creep into my mind:

“You seriously can’t run for 20 minutes. It’s impossible for you to do it.”

“Well, you can probably do 9 minutes, but definitely not 20.”

“This workout is rigged. You are not ready for a 20 minute run.”

“Seriously? You’re gonna die at 12 minutes, tops.”

And on and on and on. I kept trying to shoot down the negative thoughts but they felt like they were going to consume me. It didn’t help that my breathing was not in sync with the rest of my body. I tried to focus on my music, and my prayer agenda, but the thoughts kept butting in.

At some point in the run, I started to feel confident. Even though I haven’t run in a few days, and even before then I hadn’t run in over a week, I was handling this running thing. The scenery on my course was familiar and consoling, and there were a few people out running as well. Eventually, I found my rhythm.  I was able to focus on something else other than my looming failure.

At about the 9 minute mark I started to panic a little because I knew I was going to have to turn around soon. I considered running a further distance and walking back, thinking that if I turned around this would somehow discourage me from completing the run. I don’t know why I was overanalyzing my run, but I was. I ended up turning around at the halfway point. This was a good thing, as it was helpful for me to visually measure how much further I had to go.

The last third of the run I was able to let go and just pray and sing along to my music. I was no longer in defeatist mode, as I’d conquered the halfway point and figured there was no failing now.

Finally, I finished. My thighs hurt a bit. I was out of breath. But I did it. I even blurted out loud, “I did it!”

It felt pretty great. It felt easier than I thought it would feel.

I really need to get these negative thoughts and doubts out of my system. It’s never as bad as I think it will be.

P.S. I was happy to discover my C25K iPhone app has been updated! The interface is looking nicer now. I’m not entirely sure there any new features, but I appreciate improvements.

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• running
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• doubt

On My Fear of Running for 20 Minutes

My C25K workouts have been going well. (If some of you don’t know it’s a 9-week program where you run three days a week and each workout consists of running and walking intervals. As the weeks progress, the running intervals get longer and the walking intervals get shorter, until you’re able to run a full 45 minutes.)

I’m now in the middle of Week 5. I took some days off during the program. I’ve also sped up the program at certain times, in that I don’t take as many rest days between workouts. Most of the workouts have seemed fairly easy to me. Sure, I can’t run for very long but I’m not dying by the end of my workouts either. I am always able to actually do the workouts, instead of cheating by walking too early, etc.

Some days I even pull doubles, because I know 30 minutes is child’s play for a workout. That is until I pulled up today’s workout. Week 5 day 2 is on some other stuff. They want me to run 20 minutes without stopping!!

What the what??

My last workout was two 8 minute runs, which I did okay. They were somewhat hard, but mentally it was tougher than it was physically. I was surprised my body was able to run and not feel so weary. I even caught a few second winds. I was able to think about other things while running, as opposed to mentally whining about how this was gonna suck and how I was gonna die on the East River esplanade.

But now, 20 whole minutes??? The workout after this one goes back to interval running, which makes me think they’re throwing in a monkey wrench just because. They want me to fail!

I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever run 20 whole minutes without stopping in my life. I mean, for track, I was a thrower/sprinter/hurdler, so the most I ran at one time was a mile, I’m thinking? My miles back then were probably 7-10 minutes, I’m guessing. There’s no way I ever ran more than 1 mile straight. In basketball….eh we stopped here and there. We ran suicides, and games/practice all have their time to stop or break.

I know I started doing this program so I could learn distance running. But it feels too soon. I’m not ready. I need my running training wheels to stay on!

I don’t know if I will do the run today. I’m still scared. Gonna think about it and try to compile the best 20 minute running playlist ever.

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Running in the Cold

I haven’t been running because it’s been cold. I know I am a California Girl and everything below 65 degrees is considered freezing, but really…it’s cold here in NY :( The last time I ran it was probably 31 degrees at the time, but recently…it’s been in the 20s. Last time I ran, my nose and ankles were frozen after the run (I need to wear socks that cover up my ankles, clearly). I cut my cool down time and warm up time in half (typically I had longer durations than most people). But now? I try to warm up and cool down ASAP so i can get my 35 minute workout in.

Argh.

This weather is really putting a damper on my progress. Not only am I afraid of the weather, but now the workouts are getting harder and I am afraid I won’t be able to do them. That’s not the end of the world, but I am a perfectionist who wants to get everything right the first time around :/

It’s supposed to snow today with a high temp of 28 degrees. We’ll see if I make it out.

• running
• cold weather
• c25k

C25K Workout #9: Week 3 Day 3

Wow. So it’s been 7 whole days since I last ran. HOW did that happen?

I wanted to run yesterday, because I knew I’d be eating up everything in sight for the holiday, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

This morning I woke up and had this internal fight with myself:

Self: I need to run today.

Self #2: Yeah you should.

Self: But I don’t feel like it.

Self #2: Nope, you don’t.

Self: Maybe tomorrow?

Self #2: True.

Self: Wait a minute. This don’t sound right though.

Self #2: Hmm?

Self: Yeah. I have health goals and I don’t wanna wreck them now.

Self #2: Yeah you right.

Self: You stay agreeing with me.

Self #2: *silence*

Self: This is just like that whole bible concept of your flesh being the opposite of your spirit.

Self #2: Word? Ummm…are we really bout to have a bible lesson right now?

Self: I’m just sayin. I should probably try to do the opposite of what I FEEL like doing. My flesh is running the show too much.

Self #2: Yeah, you right. Let’s go.

Self: Let’s go.

And so, I put on my workout clothes and went out into today’s 51 degree weather, and ran. I hate the cold. I hate exercise. But I did it. Twice.

I decided to run the workout twice because I have been out of exercise for 7 days and because I am at the end of a C25K workout week (i.e. next workout will be harder, so I need to make sure I can handle this one).

The run went okay. I thought I was getting shin splints while running, but it seems like it was more like the tibialis anterior muscle in my right leg getting an extra workout or something. My running form was good. Strides were pretty small or medium. In some places I felt a burst of energy, and lengthened my stride. Other than that, I focused on running LSD (which brings back memories from one of my most annoying track coaches when I was younger).

I feel much better after having run. It feels good to feel in tune with your body for some reason, even if it’s not where you want it to be at the moment.

First workout: listened to my Nicki Minaj playlist. Second workout: listened to my Jesus Is My Running Homeboy playlist.

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