Couch-to-5K

I've never been a runner. In fact, often I look at runners out on the street in the heat or rain or whatever I say "they're crazy" or "glad I'm not doing that". The truth is, I was jealous. Not jealous of running in rain or humidity, but jealous that they're running. Because I can't run. Or at least so I thought.

Even as a kid I couldn't run. I don't know if my asthma was truly worse them, or if I just used it as an excuse, but I even "failed" the 1-mile run in high school. And then post-college when I was in good shape, working out regularly, I still couldn't run. I tried many times and failed.

So for some reason I decided about 5 weeks ago that I wanted to learn to run. Not sure what inspired me, but I googled it and found a program that can supposedly get you from being a couch potato to being capable of running a 5K, in 9 weeks. I was leery, but this sounded like the program for me.

If you check out the program, you'll see that the first week starts off doing intervals of walking and jogging, where the most you ever jog at a time is 60 seconds. Sounded like cake. Apparently I had no idea how out-of-shape I was. By the end of that day I thought I was going to die. My chest was sore, my lungs were tight, I was out of breath, sweating, etc. Wasn't feeling too optimistic. But I persevered. I never missed a day of the plan and I always completed what was scheduled for me.

On Sunday, I am proud to say, I reached the end of the 5th week of the program and successfully jogged for 20 minutes non-stop. Granted it was a really sloooooowwww jog, but I did it. I've still got a long ways to go until I'm running a 5K, but I'm more than halfway done the program and officially have jogged a longer distance than I have in my whole life. Sad, but true. And I no longer feel near-death while running, and dare I say it, am starting to feel like an official runner (not just a running impostor).

And I'm not embarrassed to admit it...I'm proud of me!