About 4 months ago Kimmy and I got a membership with World Gym near our house. I have been going in about 4-5 days a week and I have been feeling great. In the midst of all this I decided to set some goals for myself (besides getting in better shape and losing some weight) and two of them were that I wanted to ride in the MS 150, which I did when I was 17 and have said ever since then that I would do it again, and the other is to run in a 5k. I have never really been a runner so this was a big goal for me.
So I started running on the treadmill at the gym to see if I could build up my stamina to do it. I would walk for a little bit and then run for some. It started with walking for 4, then running for 6. However, I would only do this for about 20-22 minutes. Hardly long enough to do a 5k at that pace. I would slowly decrease my walking time and increase my running time.
Fast forward to today. I decided that I was only going to walk for a minute and then run for 9 minutes. Then I walked for 2 minutes and then ran again for 8 minutes. Normally I would stop at this point and do a 2 minute cool down, but I decided that because I was at 2.25 miles I was going to keep going and finish the 3.1 miles (which is a 5k). So I walked for 2 minutes, then ran for another 5 minutes, then walked for a 1.5 minutes and then ran for the finish line. I finished the 5k in a speedy (not!) 32 minutes. So basically I ended up walking for 6.5 minutes and running for 25.5 minutes, but I did the whole 5k!
I was jazzed up about it. I have never done that before. To put it into perspective at the beginning of the summer after our softball practice our coach told us to run around the football that was next to the baseball diamond and I could barely make it around the field. Well, a track around a football field is .25 miles and I easily ran .75 miles today in the beginning of my time on the treadmill. So I think I am progressing along pretty well. I might actually be able to run a whole 5k by summer. I won’t be breaking records or winning, but that is not my goal. My goal is to just do it.
On the weight side of things, when I began my time at the gym in the beginning of August I weighed 235, wore a size 38 jean (that fit snugly) and wore an XL shirt (that fit me semi-loose). I know wear a size 36 jean and they are really loose, so I need to get 34’s, and large shirts are loose on me. I only weigh 215 pounds, but when you are working out you are adding muscle and that weighs 2X as much as fat. And although I have not lost a lot of weight, I am slimming up and that is great! I am looking forward to next summer and achieving my goals.
