The Race is On

Okay, so first we should make introductions of the main characters. I'm Linda, I'm a 30 something who hates running. Annie, is my 2 year old yellow lab mix.

Last week we took Annie to vet, and she told us she had gained 20 pounds! Long story short, Annie has a thyroid problem and medicine will clear it right up. The bad news is that she's got 20 lbs to lose now that she's on the medicine.

Back to Linda now, I've got a perfectly healthy thyroid, but could also stand to lose 20 lbs. So Annie and I are going to race each other. I figure it's a fair competition, she spends aboug 20 hours a day sleeping, and will only run when I do. I probably spend 20 hours a day either sitting at my job, in my car or sleeping...so we are even at that.

So where does the inspiration to start of all things, running come from? Well 2 places, my friends Shannon and Kim. Shannon is also a non-runner, but has found a program she is trying called from Couch to 5K. She's blogging her progress and I figure if she can do it I can too. My friend Kim has asked me to do a marathon with her in Green Bay in May. I figured I better start with a 5K and work up to the whole marathon thing. 26 miles seems ridiculous. I get in my car to go shorter distances than that!

So I am starting this blog to keep me honest about my running. It seems concieted to think that you all care about my running progress, but if I feel like you all are watching me, I might just actually stick with this!

The Running Preparations:
So first thing I had to do was get a watch with a timer on it. So I headed to Target to pick one out. I couldn't decide which one...so I decided I'd just stroll through the clothes section, and good thing I did! I realized right then and there, that I had no clothes to run in. So lucky for me they had running shirts and shorts on sale. So I picked out 3 shirts and 1 pair of shorts. I figured that I was going to run 3 times a week I'd need that many shirts, and I had restraint and only got one pair of shorts, because I had 2 pairs that would work at home.

Oh yeah, back to the watch...so I went back to the stop watches, well I had a hard time deciding how much to spend on a watch...$50 for a fancy one or $12 for one that seemed to have what I needed...$50 would imply that I was more committed, but $12 seemed to have the functionality...I decided on the $12 watch...I hope you won't hold the commitment thing against me...Annie and I are going to do this!

Week 1 Day 1

Okay so this week we start off easy,
5 min walk for a warm up
60 seconds of running
90 seconds of walking
for 20 mins.

So Annie and I took off. We (my husband Jay and I) regularly walk our dogs, but normally we go as a group. See we have 3 dogs. Big Abby, a Newfoundland, Annie our lab mix and Little Abby a Shih Tzu. I'll explain the dog's names another time. This time as we leave I have to sneak Annie out, so Jay took Big Abby to the back yard as Annie and I sneak out the front door. I feel quite triumphant just in getting off the couch and getting out the door.

We have a great hike bike trail just a few blocks away so we head over to it. I am actually walking pretty quickly...trying to really get a good warm up. So Annie and I start our first 60 second interval. She is not really sure what the hurry is. She's really never ran on a leash before, so she is not really keeping the pace with me. So I start to cheer her on and she starts to pick up the pace. We are both feeling good. One thing I have discovered is that I have no concept of time when it comes to exercise...so I keep checking my watch a lot. I find it funny that I am so concerned about running even 1 second longer than the plan suggests. Like it would kill me to run for 61 seconds. But I am a rule follower, so I constantly check my watch. I hope I get used to this time thing.

So this trail we run/walk on has an underpass that goes under the railroad tracks. I'm not a big fan of it, because it is really noisy and it just kinda freaks me out when a train is on it. So as we are approaching the underpass I can see a train, but I can't turn around so Annie and I keep going. Apparently Annie doesn't like the underpass either...she bolts on me, so my comfortable pace got turned into a sprint as Annie pulled me through the underpass at her sprinting speed.

Luckily on the way back Annie and I did not encounter a train so I got to keep the pace. But the best news is that we finished the 20 mins. In fact we added a extra 5 min walk for a cool down. So day 1 week1 is a success!