Week 1 of C25K

In the Army, life is all about acronyms.  Heck, we joke there are acronyms for acronyms!!  So writing the above acronym is easy for me, but do YOU know what it means??  C25K stands for Couch to 5k, the running program that I am starting, again, to get back into running.  Just like a baby has to learn to crawl before they can walk, runners need to start off the program slow, walking before running.  The entire  plan can be found here but here is what I have learned over this past week.

Running. Is. Hard.  Like REALLY hard.  I'm not sure if it helps that my husband is a runner, and I would love to go running with him one day.  But he ran in high school, and in college, and can run at a 7:30-8:00 mile.  My current average is around a 12:13 mile, but that is also with walking for the first 5 minutes of the 20 minute work. It's actually not a bad time, my walking time average is around 14:13, and when I get to running I can get up to as fast as a 10:40 pace.  So the average of my 12:13 per mile run is slowed down by the five minute warm up.

I know that warming up is important and I cannot let that slow me down or discourage me from keeping with this program as I view my overall times.  I hope to one day get to the point where I can do a few jumping jacks and maybe some knee highs in the house before going out and hitting the pavement, and pressing "Start" on the ipod and Nike+ that keeps my running log.  Here's hoping for a 10:30 average by the time this C25K program is finished, and maybe a run with that Roadrunner (aka-my husband).