Day 5: Monday, January 19, 2009

Well, it has been an official week - from Monday to Monday. Being that I was off of work today, I did my running/walking in the afternoon. I was going to do for an hour, but I thought that might throw my regime off, in the short run, so I made sure to limit myself to my "usual" regime of walking 2 minutes at 4 MPH and then running for 1 minute at 5 MPH and repeat until I hit 30 minutes. I had considered keeping this pace but for longer time, but again, I decided that might throw off what I'm trying to do - at least in the short term (i.e. I might be too fatigued to then pick up on either Tuesday or Wednesday for my scheduled workout).

So with that said, my workout came in very similar to what I did on Saturday (day 4), at least when it came to the treadmill portion.

I walked my 20 minutes at 4 MPH for a total distance of 1.32 miles and then ran 11 minutes for a total of .917 miles at 5 MPH. With cool down session - I totaled again 2.31 miles in 32 minutes.

I also did curls of 40 lbs. for 60 reps to work my arms/muscles (since my arms are lean, I do focus on keeping that lean muscle, instead of "running" that good weight off).

This run was pretty good for me. I did start lagging slightly in the middle again, but not nearly as bad as I felt on Saturday. I instead, before I began my workout, strategically set up my playlist of music so that during those middle times, I would have more quality songs to help push me through it. This method seemed to have helped, at the very least, it allowed me to focus on the music instead of focusing on the minutes as they passed - and it really helped me to work through the session - so I am grateful for that, and I think I will try this method again, in hopes it can continue to push me through the tough middle times of my workout.

But again, I ran for the final two minutes and could have possibly gone longer, had I been using a more proper breathing technique - instead of sucking wind like I ended up doing, only because I made the mistake of opening my mouth to breath and couldn't slow my pace or change my breathing while running. I threw me off, but I pushed through for the final two minutes, the same as Saturday, but running for 2 minutes straight didn't even seem possible only one week ago, so I am still making progress and am happy thus far with the results.

Look for Day 6 either on Tuesday or Wednesday - if not on Tuesday, then it will be for certain on Wednesday. As I previously mentioned, I do hope to begin to at least walk for 20-30 minutes between my running days, but as of now, I have not started that into my regime - mostly due to time constraints - not a good excuse, and thus, I hope to be able to make more time in working towards my goals.