Week 5 ... check

So I run for 20 minutes for the first time in my life ... and I don't bother to blog about it.

If there were ever a run where all the signs were pointing to "don't do it" - this run would have been it. Fortunately I didn't have to be at work until 10:30 on Saturday so I decided to go pre-work.

I wake up. I look at weather.com. It's cold. (32F) and windy (15mph) and snowing a little. Great.
So I look for enough clothes to put on to keep me warm without making me hot or weighing me down ... check
I take my apt. key off my keyring so I can put it in my shoe pocket.
Then I take the key out because I'm going to have to look the door and put it on the couch.
I throw my headwarmer and ipod on the couch.
I put my gloves and headwarmer and jacket on.
I turn on my ipod. Nothing's happening. The battery is dead. Fan-tastic.
It's hot in all these clothes.
I go looking for my old MP3 player. Something is right with the world because I find it, it's charged, and it has workout music loaded onto it.
Then I have to find my running watch.
I'm getting really hot here.
I go to grab the key and ... it's not there.
I check under the cushions ... not there.
I check EVERYWHERE. My bedroom, the chair, the floor, under the couch.
I take off my gloves, hat, jacket, one of my shirts - look for the key in my clothes.
Check under the cushions again - yay! key!
I put everything back on and head out the door.

*sigh* Let me tell you I was impressed with myself right then and there. I was kind of cold starting out, so I skipped a couple minutes of the warm up. My leg was tight. I don't know if it slowed me down or not. After a couple minutes I was at the perfect temperature and was comfortable the rest of the time.

What was weird (or maybe normal, based on what I've read) was that the first 10 minutes was hell. I didn't think I could do it. I was considering stopping when I looked at my watch and saw: "2'47''" ... wow, lisa, are you joking?

But then I got to my turnaround and then next 10 minutes were great. I stopped for 15 seconds because my shoe came untied, but solid (slow!) running for 20:44 (I had to make it to the end of the road to check mileage since I didn't have Nike+ with me.

I checked my mileage with gmaps and it worked out to exactly 12:00/mile. Which means that I either slowed down a lot from previous runs or Nike+ has been lying to me. Probably a little of both, but mostly the latter. That's okay though. I will get faster. And I'll calibrate the Nike+ better possibly this week.


so ... take home message: Yay! I did it! - The rest of C25K seems like cake now. I KNOW I can run 20 minutes even if it doesn't feel good the whole time. And it's all willpower now. I have 10 minutes left of will in me!!!


On a side note:
I've been blogging-discouraged because I don't think my blog has that same "gotta read it" feel as a lot of other runners' blogs do (at least, they do for me). So... tips are welcome. What would you like to hear about?


*sorry for the ridiculous length - if you're still with me, you're awesome. haha.