Marathon Pre-Training, Week 5

This week's stats:

• 6.94 treadmill miles
• 6.67 outdoor miles
• 0 hours on the elliptical machine
• 2 weightlifting sessions
• 2 pounds lost

Total pre-training stats:

• 5 weeks
• 33.96 treadmill miles
• 17.52 outdoor miles
• 8 pounds lost

I ran this week.  I ran, and it didn't kill me.

Also, I'm going to stop bitching about my rate of weight loss.

This week started out weird.  Too many odd deviations from my normal work and meeting schedule, and the end result was that we didn't work out at all on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday.  The scale went down a pound on Monday and a pound on Tuesday, though, despite me eating my normal allotment of calories.  And I expect to be down another pound tomorrow or Monday, judging from the way the scale teased me this morning.  So, you know, not entirely disappointing. 

When we went to work out on Wednesday night I was finally well rested and didn't have to be at work early the next morning, so we should have had plenty of time to get in a full workout.  But Kourt's computer was giving her fits, so she wasn't exactly in the mood to stick around the gym after lifting weights.  I insisted on doing a half hour of cardio, though, so since I knew I wasn't going to be spending a full hour on the treadmill I decided to take my intervals up a notch and actually crank it up to "brisk jog" speed (for me, at least).  I ran one minute out of every five.  I don't know why it surprised me to find that even after two months of serious strength training and long distance walking, a total of five minutes of jogging was still difficult.  It's not that I get too out of breath, it's the jarring of the impact that my body isn't prepared for.  My muscles aren't used to being stressed in that way.  But I did it, and while it was uncomfortable it wasn't actually painful.  I'm realizing that years of gym class where running was either a test or a punishment has set me up to have a bad attitude towards running in general, and that's not a good mindset.

So Friday we went back for a long cardio workout, and this time I ran for 90 seconds out of every 5 minutes for a full hour.  For the last 15 minutes I was fighting to make myself go for the whole 90 seconds each time, but once again I did it without feeling like it might kill me.  Granted, the second I stepped off the treadmill I knew I was going to be stiff and sore for a few days after, but not a bad sore.  Even if I don't end up running much or any of the marathon itself, I definitely think it's time to get my body used to doing it.

This morning, then, I met up with my sister for a 2-hour walk on the trail.  To solve my shoelace problem, my sister brought me a pair of Easy Laces.  So far I'm digging them.  And last weekend they were running a sale on Clif bars and such at the grocery store, so I picked up a couple of packages of Shot Bloks to try out.  I remembered to bring those along.  I forgot to think about sunscreen.  Big thumbs up to the Shot Bloks.  Yummy.  Big thumb down to the lovely shade of red I'm currently sporting on my forehead.  I look like the top of my head lost its will to live and stuck itself in the oven.