If You See Me Running, You Should Run...

... is what I used to say to everyone.  No, seriously, there are probably bears coming.  Or zombies.  Or zombie bears.

But Alex was getting sick and tired of Shaun T.'s Insanity and honestly I can't blame him.  It's a long program, but damn if it didn't give me great fitness results.  So, I decided to try running on the treadmill one day and I was surprised at how well I did and how good I felt, but it's not a secret to any serious runner that cross-training is important for performance.

Anyway, I've probably tried the Couch-to-5k about three times and most of the time I get to about week 6 or 7 before I quit.  I figured this was because I suck at running and it just wasn't for me.  I believed that the treadmill was the only way because the track was always moving so I had to keep going.  I thought, "no way will anyone ever make me run outside, ever."

And then Alex downloaded RunKeeper and wanted to try it.  Oh, by the way, Alex used to be a cross-country runner.  No, I'm not joking.  Runners come in all sizes, ya'll.  So, yeah.  He made me.  I was not thrilled by the idea.

RunKeeper has a couple of training programs in the app, so we picked the 5k training program and away we went.  We're due to complete a 5k with this program before the middle of August, so the intensity is slowly ramping up.  There are some interval runs, some long walks, and some straight up distance runs.  Here's my numbers for the distance runs:

June 10 - 12:01 minutes/mile
June 19 - 12:15 minutes/mile
June 23 - 11:04 minutes/mile
June 27 - 11:16 minutes/mile

So, the overall trend seems to show improvement.  My starting pace would be about a 5 on the treadmill, and I'm working towards a 5.5 in treadmill speed.  I'm sure it'll just keep going from there.

The biggest and most surprising revelation is that this is easier.  It should have made sense to me long before now, but treadmill running is exhausting.  The pace never lets up.  When you're running outside, you set the pace.  I was so worried that I would stop running just because the track wasn't moving underneath me yet what I found was that I could simply choose to slow my pace a bit and keep going until I felt stronger.  Well, duh!  Right?  Whatever.  Let me have my little realization.

The point is, I kind of like running outside now.  It's just another way I've proven that I have no idea what my body is capable of.  My body is incredible.  Let's see where this takes me!