Day 3: Thursday, January 15, 2009

What a difference a day makes. As I reported for day 2 - I felt really good, great stamina, and was even able to go "beyond my time" running - but that was not the case for day 3.

I don't know what my problems were - maybe it was the fact I ate too much for dinner (asparagus pasta), or maybe the fact I exercised just the previous night, or maybe more simply, day 3 is a more accurate representation of where I truly am, but whatever it was, I was hurting.

I changed my "weight training" exercise for today, and did it before I ran this time. I did push ups, so as to "jolt" a different muscle group than the curls - and I did 30 of them. Then I got on the treadmill.

I started out in the same fashion - walk 2 minutes at 4 MPH, run 1 minute at 5 MPH, and then repeat 10 times until I hit my goal for 30 minutes. The first 3 reps of this (9 minutes total time) I was feeling pretty good. I thought it was going to be another cake walk (much like the previous evening), however, that did not last. On the 4th rep, during the run, my legs started to feel more fatigued, and I started to labor slightly with my breathing. Then on the 6th run (between minute 17:00 and 18:00), I really, really wanted to just stop. My legs were sore and aching, and I didn't know how I was going to make it through. Then the voice in the back of my head intervened, saying "it's only 12 more minutes, and only 4 more runs - the problem was, it was taking me upwards of the full 2 minute walk to "recover" from each run, but I continued.

I began counting down the runs, and I tried to focus on anything except the actual running while I was doing it - so as not to watch the clock. I would run, looking down, looking up, or just kind of dazed - but each time I checked the clock, I was barely halfway through the minute - I was losing this game. Finally, the time came for the last run - and I told myself the same thing I told myself on day 2 - run "until you can't run anymore". I wish I could report a victory, but sadly, I cannot - I "couldn't run anymore" at the 29:45 mark - and really had to push that last 15 seconds out of my legs, but I did finish what I consider the "minimum" with the 30 minutes, and proceeded to cool down at 3.5 MPH for a half a minute, and then another minute of slowing intervals until finally pushing the stop.

As I mentioned above, I did 30 push ups.

And as in total for running/walking - I did 31:50 minutes at a distance of 2.23 - a slight decrease from day 2, but still a positive increase from day 1 - though I feel last night was much more labored than day 1 had been - like I said, possibly due to a few factors.

Broken down, I still did the 20 minute walk at 4 MPH for a distance of 1.32 miles, the 10 minute run at 5 MPH for a distance of .83 miles, and a total cool down session lasting 1:30 minutes for a total distance of .08 miles. It was still a victory, though, due to the laborious nature of day 3's workout, I do believe I will skip Friday as being day 4 and move straight to Saturday as day 4's workout.

Hopefully, the day off will do my legs and my stamina a bit of good.