Wednesday, May 26, 2010

How Do You Eat An Elephant? One Bite at a Time.

I wanted to update everyone on how my running is going now that I am more than halfway done with training for my first ever race, a 5K.

I am on week 7 of the 12 week training program and so far it is going fabulous. I love running so much. I love how I feel when I do it and I love accomplishing new goals.

Before I started running I was in such awe of marathon runners. I thought, "what an amazing accomplishment." And here I am less than a year later, training for my first race, a 5K.

The running has been easier than I ever imagined thanks to the great program my running store, Fleet Feet has in place with New Balance. It is called No Boundaries and it makes training for a 5K easy. I haven't been sore, I haven't been tired, I haven't been injured, and I haven't missed a run in 7 weeks. I hated running before I started now I am in love.

At this point in the training program we are running about 2.5-2.8 miles with 5 minutes of warm up and 5 minutes of cool down, for a total distance of 3.2-3.5 miles. As a group we average about 12 1/2 minute mile time over the course of our run. Individually I have been able to do a 9 1/2 minute mile time over 1 mile, slower over the entire run.

Since I am fairly confident I could run the 5K now my goals for the rest of the training program are to improve my mile time, not get injured, and have fun.

I've heard Fleet Feet does a 10K training program in the fall which I am planning to sign up for. As long as everything stays in track I will be running my first 10K this November. Eventually I will want to train for a half marathon and someday a full marathon. I'm not sure how long it will take me to make the jump from 10K to half marathon but even if I am running 10K's this time next year I will still be very proud of myself.

This weekend is a big race near my hometown, the Bolder Boulder. A couple of friends are running it this year and I am very jealous I can't be there. I already told my hubby next year I want to make it a goal to run the Bolder Boulder with my friends.

I am so happy I decided to take the leap of faith and take up running. It truly is great!

Happy running everyone!

5 comments:

LoveFeast Table said...

Congrats on sticking with it!!

MommyLovesStilettos said...

I'm running my first 5K on Sunday :) I'm nervous!

Together We Save said...

Congrats!! It is hard work and a big time commitment!

Jessica said...

my husband and I trained and ran our first 5k last year and it was SOOO fun! Enjoy it!

Evolving Mommy Catherine said...

Your title for this post is so fitting. I love running too. I love getting to see my time improve and my distance improve, I love listening to music and having time to myself, and I love that there are some many goals that I want to accomplish that once I cross one off there will be another for me to strive for.

Yay for running and double yay for the Bolder Boulder!