Couch to 5k Week #1

Tonight I started the Couch to 5k challenge, one of the goals on my bucket list. If you haven't heard of it, it is an app made for non-runners with the aim of turning you into a runner, but at a sustainable pace. A couple of my friends have tried it and had great results, so I've wanted to try it out for ages. I've been meaning to get round to it for ages and finally had the time, energy, and good weather to start today. (Also, exercise, if you can do it, is meant to be really good for endo, so I'm hoping this challenge helps.)

via

First off, I'd like to make it really clear that I am not a runner. My body was definitely not built for sprinting (I never won any ribbons in high school) and I don't find running very comfortable at all. However, I love walking, and I did fool myself into running for an hour a so a day for a couple of months in 2006 by using interval training. So I'd like to be able to see if I could do a fun run, or even a half marathon (let's not get too ahead of ourselves here by aiming for a full marathon).

My first session, despite a little bit of huffing and puffing on my part, went really quickly. They use an interval method of 1 min jog/1.5 mins walk when you first start, so you always have the hope that they will say you can walk again soon. It syncs up with your music so you can play music while you run, and you know when to walk or run by them saying "walk" or "run" which still works when the music is playing. I hope I can keep it up, because it seems like a really good way to do it, I just have to make it a priority and hope for energy and good weather. It's separated into three half an hour sessions a week, for nine weeks, so that'll bring me up to when it starts getting cooler in Canberra...

enjoying my pumped up pool in my backyard!

On a side note, tonight I also pumped up my new huge backyard paddling pool with a foot pump so I now have thighs of steel. It was nice to have the reward of sitting in it afterwards though (with my homemade tuna/tomato/cucumber salad dinner - simple but tasty)!

Tonight was markedly different from this morning. This morning I was thinking about leaving work because I felt so awful (pain/fatigue/anxiety/etc), I went for a walk and sat in the sun for the better part of an hour on my lunch break. That helped a little, and then I promised myself to stay for just one more hour and try and work out the solution to an error I was getting. It worked, I ended up having a really productive afternoon at work (which distracted me from how awful I felt), and came home to be super productive off of the high I got from working something out. It doesn't always work out that way when I set myself these mini-goals to get through the day, but I have to say, when it does work, it's awesome!