Fat Girl Running

Kat has inspired me to get my running shoes back on; she is training for an as-yet-unspecified 5K, so we're going to egg each other on. She runs on the treadmill at her condo and I like to run outside (because I don't have a treadmill and I'm too poor to join a gym, and because running on a treadmill is boring) so we probably won't actually run together until spring. But we'll talk about running!

We talked about running last night before choir, and as Kat wisely pointed out, if you want to do something you should do it as soon as possible after you've determined to do it, so I ran this afternoon after I dropped Delphine off at school. Since Blake is "working" from "home", he can make sure Cordelia doesn't catch fire or something while she's napping, and so I can leave the house in the afternoon. Plus it was sunny and warm (only -5!) - too good to pass up.

I did 3K in 1-and-1s. 1-and-1s is pretty lame, but I haven't been out for a long time, and it's cold and when I run in the cold my lungs get wheezy and I get that coppery taste in my mouth, so I thought I would go easy on myself. And it was a pretty easy run. There were times when the one minute of running seemed too short, and only one time when I was really glad of the break, so next time I will do 2-and-1s.

My plan is to run three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and the weekend. I'll do 3K for the next two runs and then up the distance a little bit and also increase intensity to 3-and-1s. I just hope it doesn't stay so cold for weeks and weeks. I don't know if I can motivate myself to run when it's horribly cold.

I went for a couple of runs over the winter, before it got so cold. I tried something new: listening to music instead of timing my intervals. (I have to choose because I time intervals by the beeping of my watch and if I'm listening to music I can't hear the beeps. I'm sure there is some technological solution to this problem.) Listening to music is fun, but I missed the satisfaction of being able to measure and manage the ratio of running to walking. (I'm a geek.) Plus it's kind of nice to have time to just let the thoughts roll through my head. Apparently that kind of unstructured daydreaming time is very important. So I'm going to stick with timing intervals.

And now I should go stretch.