I've never been an athletic person. I've never liked working out, or even playing sports that much. Mostly, it's because I am hopelessly uncoordinated; so any physical activity requiring skill wasn't something I wanted to try, lest I completely embarrass myself.
All these years of being fairly inactive, though, meant I had almost no endurance when it came to working out. The lack of endurance led to frustration when I did try to start a workout routine, and thus you can see the cycle.
Couch to 5K was almost one of those casualties. I made it through exactly 4 days of C25K back in 2010 before injuring my knee, and I never went back to it, believing I was probably just too fat to do it. Until now.
I have to honestly tell you that I've completely surprised myself every step of the way. I was so inspired by the success stories of people who have completed it, while highly doubtful that I'd ever be able to follow it. But at some point, I had to stop thinking of myself as weak. I watched my Dad, 57 years young, train for and run his first marathon last fall. How amazing is that?
I remembered the 60 second runs being a lot harder the last time around. That gave me a boost, so I moved to Week 2. Again, I was surprised at the relative ease of running 90 seconds. I cautiously kept moving forward each week. Some runs were hard. They were not all easy. Three minutes felt hard, until I ran four one day when I miscalculated my time. Then I thought, "If I can run four, I should be able to run five". And I could! I read the above quote last week, just before starting Week 5. I was nervous about it. I had been searching the internet message boards about Week 5. The general consensus was, resoundingly, "You will be so surprised at what your body is capable of'", or "Week 5 is when most people quit".
I decided I was not going to quit. I did Day 1, which was still kind of an offshoot of Week 4, just with three 5-minute runs instead of two. Day 2 of week 5...two 8-minute runs. During the first run, I didn't even look at the clock until 7:15, and I knew I had plenty of stamina left to get to 8 minutes. I almost started crying...happy tears, tears of amazement, tears of relief.
The second 8-minute run was harder, I hit the wall right in the middle. But I kept repeating the quote, and telling myself, "You just ran 8 minutes, you can do it again". And I did it, reminding myself that if I couldn't finish it, I would have to repeat the workout.
Tomorrow, the run is an attempt at 20 straight minutes. As I told my husband last week...for the first time, I am actually beginning to believe I can run a whole 5K.
If you had told me 5 weeks ago that I would be able to run 8 minutes without stopping, I would have told you to "pull the other one".
And I want to thank everyone who has been so supportive of me doing this program. The encouragement you all have given me has been amazing. I see so many other people trying this program on Facebook, too, and I think it's awesome.
I never thought I could be a runner. But I do now.
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