Today sucked. Period. I ran 2miles in 24 minutes. One thing that I struggle with immensely is being able to shut down my brain when I run. Occasionally I can push through it and it ends up fine. But today every little thing was causing me to stop. My lungs hurt. My legs hurt. I felt like I was going to crap my pants. It sucked. And as a result I feel like crap about it. It sucks because I feel like I have regressed in my progress, and I feel like I should be able to do so much better, but in all reality, it all comes down to you.
Today I was crap. I didn't help myself run at all, in fact I made it 8 times harder. I need to get over myself and get past my mental blocks. I am going to run 2 miles tomorrow, but I want to walk less, I want to run more, and I want to not think so much about it.
Griff is having me set goals for my run tomorrow: I want to run 2.0 miles, and I will take 3 walking breaks only. At .5, 1.0, and 1.5. I want to run it in between a 22 and a 23 minute mile. Hopefully setting goals like this will help.
1/26 I ran 1.5 miles in 18 minutes. I ran my whole first mile without stopping, an 11 minute mile. Better. I walked most of the last half mile. But it feels good to finally have the accomplishment of running a whole mile without stopping under my belt. 1/29 I ran 2 miles in 23:50 minutes. It kind of sucked. My mental walls were really difficult to get past today and I took many short walking breaks. Lungs felt okay but still pretty shitty. 1/31 Griff and I ran 2.5 in 30:04. There were definitely rough times. We ran outside and it was cold and I couldn't feel my toes but it was okay. I'm ready to get to the point where we can talk while we run because we ran and talked about books for roughly 5 minutes and that helped a lot. We're getting there.
1/18 I ran 2.0 in 24:35. It kind of sucked. It was far but it was going much better.
1/20 I ran 1.5 in roughly 17. It was okay.
1/22 I ran 2.11 in 27 minutes. That is roughly a 12 minute mile and it was really okay. I put my coat over the stupid display so I wasn’t looking at it and that helped a lot. I walked for about .35 because I thought I wasn’t going to run again. But then Griff encouraged me to run more. I am eager to run my 2 miles again on Saturday and hopefully get it under 24 minutes.
1/24 I ran 2 miles in 24:40. Not half bad in my opinion. I’ll take it. I almost ran one whole mile without stopping but I psyched myself out. Getting better.
1/11 I ran 2 miles with Griff. We prayed first and during. It took us 27 minutes because I suck. It was rough – the water and snow kept getting in my shoes. And the air was really cold.
1/12 I ran 1.10 miles in 14:23 minutes. Not a very good time. My lungs hurt, but not as much. I tried to run more at a slower pace – 5.0-5.2. It went okay. My hips hurt.
1/15 I ran 1.0 – walked .25 in 14:25 (ran in 11.20). It went much better. I ran at 5.5 for mostly the whole time with one walk for .20 of a mile in the middle. Pump up song “a little part never killed no body” hips felt tight – not much pain. Lungs hurt.
My name is Katherine and I am 23, living in a suburb of Chicago. I grew up outside of Chicago, moved to Minneapolis for college, and just moved back to Illinois after getting married in May. My husband is a highly active person, he loves physical fitness, being in shape, eating healthy, and living a clean lifestyle. So when we got married you could say I was in for a change.
I grew up in a very traditional family. We all sat down for dinner together and had a meat, a starch, and a veggie. Every night. We were never that active of a family. We all lean more towards the introverted side of the scale, so our idea of family activities included sitting on the deck and talking, reading, and watching movies. I grew up in a family that was seemingly inactive. It wasn't that we didn't do things together, we just didn't do highly active things together; no long walks in the summer, no family bike rides.
When I started dating Griff, my now husband, I was surprised by just how active his family was. But it wasn't always like that; I had the privilege of watching his family change to make much healthier eating choices as a family, to all 5 of them running 5ks together. My husband has run 2 half marathons and wants to run a full, it's only a matter of time.
When Griff decided he wanted to run another half marathon, he asked me if I would run it with him. And I laughed. I'm not a runner. At all. I hated running growing up, it always hurt my lungs or my hips or my knees. I grew up with slight knee issues and I always let that be an excuse.
When my grandmother died in 2013, she was the third grandparent that I had lost to heart disease. When this happened, my sister and I made a promise to live healthy lives, since heart disease ran so heavily in our family history. After this point I started to run, or tried to. In college, I would go work out 3 times a week, trying to stay active, but now I realize they were really pitiful tries. I would have a great routine to then blow it because I had to work, or I felt sick, or I was exhausted. It went on like this for two years.
Until I married Griff. We decided when we came back from our honeymoon to try the Paleo diet. It was the easiest time for us to transition because we had a completely empty fridge. I remember our first trip to the grocery store feeling so distraught because I felt like we couldn't buy anything. Now it just feels like a fact of life. We kept on our Paleo diet for a good 4 months, and we were pretty strict about it. Lately we have fallen back a bit, but still keep to some aspects of the diet.
Having already made the diet change, and seeing my husband get up to work out every morning, it made me feel like a lazy butt, honestly. Seeing my husband stress about making sure he worked out at least 3 times a week and being able to see results as he put on muscle and dropped weight in others was encouraging.
The day after he signed up for the race, we were at church talking to a few friends who were also running the race. They asked if I was, and I laughed and said “oh, no. I'm not a runner.” One of our friends, who had just a full marathon a few months previously, looked me in the eye and said “I wasn't either,” and talked about how training is a completely different game, and using different rewards to help push them forward. She told me we could get a group of ladies together from our church to go on long runs on the weekend and it would be fun. And seeing how close it brought her and her husband together, was also a bit of motivation for me.
Right after church that morning, we ran to the store to get gloves and hats and headbands. Right after that, we went for our first run, together, for 2015!
