Sunday, November 1, 2009

I've been at it for two months now...

Though it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here, rest assured that I’m still involved in my “Fatty to 5K Quest”. I haven’t given up yet.

“Why would she give up?” you may ask. Well, those who know me know that I use to have a corner in my apartment that I dubbed “the corner of lost hobbies”. When I moved to the house I’m in now, I gained enough extra rooms that I now have a whole room that I call the “room of lost hobbies”. Anyhow, I just get bored with stuff after awhile. The room basically just contains all my crafting supplies. Some of them I use and some of them I don’t. For example, the room of lost hobbies is where I keep my unfinished scrapbook that I started in the fall of 2001 to commemorate my 2001-02 grad school year at Purdue. There’s also a few square inches of crocheted yarn from when I wanted to learn to crochet. Uh-oh, I’m beginning to ramble. I’ll try to refocus…

I’m still running, three or 3.1 miles every other day. When it’s nice enough to run outside, I do an even three miles, since that’s an even four times around the track at Fairgrounds Park. I joined the Cardinal Fitness in Valparaiso on October 8th to help me keep at it on the days that I don’t have time to run during the daylight, or when it’s uncomfortably cool, or when it’s pouring rain (which it’s been doing a lot of lately). Anyhow, when I run on a treadmill at Cardinal, I run a full 3.1 miles (which is allegedly the U.S. equivalent to the pesky metric measurement of 5K (I could probably do a whole post someday on why I prefer standard measurements to metric, even though my “scientist” sister claims that metric makes so much more sense!)). There I go skewing from the point again…see how it could be easy for me to abandon hobbies??

Yesterday I upped my jogging intervals…walking two minutes, jogging six (2/6). Prior to that I had done walk two/jog five (2/5) for awhile. I’ve really skewed from the original interval plan that I got from my bro-in-law. I’ve been doing a given interval for more than the prescribed one week, since I have ‘til March and the plan was for preparing in the short time of eight weeks. The plan actually said to go from 2/5 to 2/7, but I thought that would seem like a big jump, so I figured I’d do 2/6 a couple times. So that’s where I’m at right now.

I completed my most recent outdoor 3-mile run (on Thursday, 10/29) in 34:40 (walk 2/jog 5). Yesterday (Saturday, 10/31), I ran 3.1 miles on a treadmill in a time of 35:28 (walk 2/jog 6). Either way, my pace is below the 12 minutes per mile mark, which is pretty good considering that I’m still walking for two minutes out of every seven.

It’s now been two months since my quest began, and I must say I’m fairly proud of myself for sticking with it. I haven’t notice much in the way of weight loss, so now that I’ve made the running a habit, I thought I’d add some further work to my repertoire. I want to make a better effort to ride my exercise bike on the days I don’t run or otherwise be active on those in-between-days. I think I’m going to make an appointment with one of the personal trainers that work through Cardinal and set some goals and make a plan to lose some fat and build some strength.

Well, that’s my update. That’s where I’m at right now. I’m getting it done. I don’t necessarily like running. I really don’t like to sweat. But I’m getting it done!

Sometimes I have some thoughts to share via Twitter immediately after I run, so if you’re on Twitter, follow me at http://twitter.com/joangrott.

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