Day 7

I thought for sure that I wouldn’t do anything on Saturday. It started off lazy and pleasant, lounging around at the beach with our friends and their corgis…because it was Corgicon and that’s basically the only time I’ll willingly go outside and stick my toes in the sand. There’s something about the outside that makes me incredibly tired. And hungry. And tired.

So when we got back at around 130pm, I ended up sleeping until 4pm. Oops.

I don’t know how I did it, but I got up from my nap (with difficulty and regret) and forced myself to go to the gym. Just saying — I’m pretty sure I deserve some credit for that. Plus, I’d finally figured out how to get my Spotify to work with my local files, and I had my awesome training playlist set up, which I wanted to use ASAP. I decided that I’d only listen to it when I was running in a sort of Pavlovian fashion.

I did all my stretching at home, ate a couple of almonds for energy, and got to walking to the gym. I climbed up those stupid eight flights of stairs, changed, and went straight to running.

Day 7 was hard. First off, I had no idea how I could figure out what my pace was, as the guide wanted me to run 400 yards, or 90 seconds. I don’t know what 400 yards looks like on a treadmill. Hell, I definitely don’t know what that looks like on not a treadmill. So I went with the timing instead. 90 seconds jogging, 90 seconds running. Then three minutes jogging, and three minutes of running. Repeat 3 times.

It might have been a combination of getting up to run literally after a nap, but I started having trouble breathing during part 1 of 3 of the three minute jog. Two minutes in, I could hear myself wheezing, despite having taken my asthma medicine beforehand. It’s quite annoying when your medicine doesn’t work the way you expect it to. I pressed on, though. I had some water with me this time around and I’m not sure if it helped. Instead of keeping pace at my 4.8mph jog, I let myself jog a little slower and walk a little slower, too. That seemed to help a bit.

I was disgustingly sweat-covered by the end of the ordeal, but I did it. And I cleared 2 miles. I walked back home in triumph…and decided to try and incorporate some of the exercise tips from the Froyo 5k training manual. I essentially did the 7 minute workout and took out all the aerobic exercises (and chair dips, because those are the worst). Pushups, situps, squats, lunges, planks. I’m surprised I didn’t pass out (despite feeling like I was going to).

I was a bit sore on Sunday, but not terribly so. Today’s Monday and I just did my Day 8 of running, so that’ll be my next entry. Getting there…getting there.