Run Week

This week began “run week.” Which sounds so much nicer and is more concise than “I hate running but I’m tired of being so slow so I should do something about it” week. Although I’m thinking of getting the latter embroidered on a tea towel or throw pillow.

I’ve never been a runner. In school when we had to do the mile run for Presidential Physical Fitness I could only manage to walk. They would pass out popsicle sticks as you passed by the teacher to track how many loops you had done. The fast kids often had 7 or 8 sticks. I would be happy with two. I was an overweight kid and teen and while I swam year-round I never excelled in land sports. I never felt coordinated on land and because of the weight I was slower, and honestly I never really tried.

When I did my first triathlon in June of 2010 I didn’t really train for the run. I had done a few 5Ks as a walk/run (mostly walk) so the 5k in the tri wasn’t that stressful to me. Until I did it and realized that I was so tired by that time that the run was even harder.

So this year I decided to do a half marathon to work on my running. My good friend Heather has done several half marathons and did the Disney World full last year so in early March I enlisted her help and we started training for the IOS Classic in May. We followed the Galloway run/walk system since my right knee gives me trouble and I finished in 2:41.43 with a pace a little over 12 min/mile. While I was happy with that I also knew that there was a lot of room for improvement. I’ve run over the summer, but not much more than just 3-4 mile runs to keep in shape.

In all three of my tri’s this year I do well at the swim, hold my own on the bike and then get creamed on the run. So I decided that I needed to work on my running so that I wouldn’t get passed by so many people in September at my Olympic. Running is more fun with others so my first workout this week was to join the NOG Run Club for a 3 mile run on Monday night. I kept a good pace of an 11min/mile and tried to run more than the 3/1 intervals we had done.

Wednesday morning I met up with a friend and we did a 40 minute run followed by 6 sprints. I tried to do a minute sprint with a minute recovery run but by I was exhausted by then. Instead I did 6 30-second sprints followed by a minute walk. You have to start somewhere, right?

Two runs down this week and I still hate running. I hate how slow and out of shape running makes me feel. I hate that even though I have lost so much weight I can still feel so fat and uncoordinated and it brings back all the memories and the pain of being 350 pounds.

Leaving the run club on Monday I looked up as I crossed the street and saw the pedestrian signal flashing “don’t walk.” I picked up my pace and started thinking about that. I just keep telling myself “don’t walk, keep going.” I’m still going to take my Galloway walk breaks to give my knee a rest, but hopefully as I get stronger I can make those walk breaks less and less and can make the runs faster.

Hopefully when it’s all said and done I’ll still have the energy for embroidering that pillow.