What do you know? I can still run a mile! Well, jog is probably a better word…I don’t know that you could call what I do “running.” (I’ve always thought of it more as “slogging” — i.e. SLOW jogging) But whatever you call it, it’s definitely more vigorous than walking! You have to understand I came at this jogging/slogging thing rather late in life…i.e. two and a half years ago. In fact, I never even set out take up jogging then. It just sort of happened by accident.
I have this neighbor I’d been walking with once or twice a week. I went out for a walk by myself one day and ran into her…she was JOGGING! Seeing this particular neighbor out jogging was about as shocking as…well, seeing ME out there jogging. She told me she’d always wanted to run a 5-K, and she wasn’t getting any younger, so…she was training to do it! She had a friend whose daughter was a sports medicine major at the University…and the daughter made up a training schedule that was designed to turn a “non-runner” into a “runner.” I was intrigued.
My friend was just starting the program…and she said she wished she had someone to do it with, that that would make it a lot easier. Hint, hint right? Well…I asked how the program worked. It looked like it was a combination of walking/jogging…with the goal of increasing the jogging and decreasing the walking each week. My friend was up to jogging five minutes straight. I was pretty sure I could jog for five minutes. Actually, I’m ten years younger than this friend…and at that time was about ten pounds lighter, too…so I figured if she could do it, I could do it. I was really curious to see whether I COULD do it or not. So I told my friend I’d train with her “as long as it remained ‘fun.'”
I ended up sticking with it the whole way. By the end of that summer, we were both jogging 5-K in just a little over 30 minutes. I’ve never had an athletic bone in my body. So this was just amazing to me. My friend gave it up the following year, I but I stuck with it. I haven’t been doing much jogging this year, though. It would take a while to work back up to 5-K, but it felt good to jog today!
Oh! Is it the Couch to 3k program? Or something like that.
I’m so proud of you!
If I get the treadmill I want for Christmas, I’m going to hop off the cross-trainer and bike and join you.
YAY!!!!
I don’t know…I’m not familiar with the Couch to 3K program. I THINK this girl wrote up our schedule as part of a class assignment. I hope she got an A…it worked!
I hope you get the treadmill! My husband keeps asking if we should get one, but I actually prefer to walk/jog outside and go somewhere (plus I’m not sure where we’d put it). I DO use the treadmill when I stay in hotels, though. It’s about the only piece of exercise equipment I actually like.
Oh. I like running outside A LOT better, but I learned last year that I tend to fall on the slush and the ice and our city doesn’t shovel off the track. So, I’m really hoping for the treadmill.
And I get terribly bored on the treadmill, but I’m hoping that if I can watch TV while I’m on it, I won’t go crazy. I don’t know. We’ll have to see.
And here’s the Couch to 5K plan on cool running: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml
I have no idea why I wrote 3K, I’ve been messing up all kinds of things like that lately.
Interesting…I checked out that site. I don’t think it’s the same training program. We did a lot less alternating than this program suggests.
And yes, it’s the winter weather that prompts my husband to suggest we get a treadmill, too. I don’t go for my walk/slog if it’s icy. Fortunately, there aren’t a lot of those days here…there are more of them some years than others. But I have an exercise bike (with a book holder) that I use on those days. I do prefer a treadmill to an exercise bike, though…I just don’t know where we’d put a treadmill.