O.
M.
G.
It's been an hour and a half since we got back from our run and it's
only just now that I can feel like I can breathe without chest pains or
keeling over and pretty much passing out. If I were some kind of
torturer person for the government or some shady group, I would TOTALLY
use running as a complete form of punishment. Much like the Chinese
water torture, where you think to yourself that it can't be that bad, I
will TOTALLY put anybody I'm torturing on a continuous loop of the first
week of the Couch to 5K.
What's even worse is that just when I'm seeing an alternation of bright
lights and black spots in front of my eyes and all light-headed, that
dillhole on the MP3 track is just saying that I shouldn't be feeling
tired or out of breath and I'm like, WHAT?! Well, I guess I'm almost
not feeling tired and out of breath...I'm almost passed out and
faceplanted directly in the middle of the sidewalk.
Ugh. Confession: I didn't even finish the whole thing. Week one is
supposed to be a five minute warm up walk and then twenty minutes of
alternating 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking and then a
last five minute cool down walk. I didn't do the last 60 seconds of
jogging and instead just did more brisk walking.
I felt like such a cop-out but I don't think there was any way I was
getting my legs to pick up their pace again. I only lasted as long as I
did because of Tara. Not that she egged me on in any way or anything,
but just seeing that she was still going really made me want to push
too, but she was SO nice about me quitting that last 60 second jog.
Excellent running buddy for sure! I thought she'd be meaner and try to
push me more! Who knows, probably since today was the first one and we
didn't know what to expect, but I doubt she'll go that easy on me for
future. I'm promising myself that I will do the WHOLE thing on
Wednesday and Friday. I feel like if it was only just ONE more minute, I
should have been able to push it and finish it...but ah well! We
finished it and ended up being where we normally are halfway through our
walk, so we made a LOT of time, plus because we had so much time, we
extended our running streets and went even FURTHER! The last 15 minutes
of the walk, we still kept up the pace (my HRM was telling me my BPM at
the end of the walk was at 170 BPMs) so we didn't slack!
There was sweat dripping and running into both my eyes, I couldn't tell
if I was crying from the sweat stinging my eyeballs or if it was just
regular tears running down my face. I know I'm feeling okay now, but it
was SO HARD! I'm looking ahead at the weeks to come and I'm feeling
that sweat stinging my eyes again - oh, who am I kidding, I'm feeling
like I want to start crying!
BUT. But. There is a little upside story to this. My HRM wasn't able to
catch me BPMs in the middle of the run (my fingers were SO sweaty and I
know my heart rate was completely erratic) so it was only calculating
stuff based on our earlier BPM check of 140, so I'm thinking the
calories I actually burned was WAY higher than the 391 it said I burned
at the end of the 45 minute walk! But anywho, I put those figures into
my exercise log and I now have 931 calories to use for my afternoon
snack and dinner! YAY! So now I'm just trying to figure out what we
should have for dinner. We definitely have to a do a grocery run, so I
might have to get creative or it might be a bad dinner!
Anywho, I was playing around with some of the tools over at MFP and came
across their BMI tool. I know it's not really the be all and end all,
but this is definitely something to think about:
*wince* Yup...there's my little arrow at OBESE. It's not that it really
surprises me, but ay carumba! Ah well...that's the starting
off-point. It doesn't matter that I quit before, I know I can do it and
I have more of a support system and I don't have a short-term goal to
work towards so I can just quit after, so hopefully I'll be able to see
this thing through and have it so that I really LIKE to exercise and eat
more healthily and not make it feel like this is SUCH a HARD thing to
do! We'll see, that or I may have less friends later when I totally
freak out on my support system! *LOL* What I learned though that I saw
someone write on the MFP site is that hating myself won't help me lose
weight and that's definitely what I'm trying to work towards. I'm
looking at the chart and seeing it for what it is. It's the truth. So
I'm not trying to do what I used to do before or what other people have
tried to do to inspire me to lose weight. I'm not going to try to hate
myself or be disgusted with myself and hope that those feelings are
enough to motivate me into losing weight. It hasn't been working so
just seeing that really made me think, YEAH! That's totally true...so,
I'm not putting anything up here to make myself feel bad or embarrassed
so that I try harder. It is what it is. I'm just going to say that
next time I post that chart up there, the numbers will be less!
Anywho, I've got some stretching to do this evening and - oh! I've also
got a doctor's appointment on Thursday. I've been having this heel
pain thing happening for quite some time now (nearing or over a year...)
and I Googled it (yes, I can TOTALLY see my doctor rolling his eyes
right now) and I think I may have something called plantar fasciitis. I
read some of the symptoms and it definitely sounds like me! But
anywho, what do I know, it could also be heel spurs, or something else
altogether, but hopefully, my doctor will be able to tell me and we'll
see where that goes! If I'm really planning on seeing this C25K to the
end, I'll definitely be needing to do something about that!
Tara just came out here and said that after we finish this, we could get into cycling and swimming and do a triathlon.
*cries*
Tara finally consented to taking a picture with me *LOL* For a second I considered cropping this picture because I wasn't feeling my belly bulge-i-ness, but it is what it is, right? I wouldn't have weight-loss entries and weight-loss goals if I looked skinny, right? So there we are in all our running glory! Don't we just look like runners though?! Check out the armband that Tara gave me - MP3 player no longer hanging out in my sports bra! Bwahahaha! She'd been on a mission to find an armband for her iPod and from finding nothing, all of a sudden she had two and she gave the other one to me! w00t!
Anywho, there was a little bit of a dramatic moment prior to the start of our run...
No, I'm not trying to show cleavage, pervs, look farther down at my poor little knee! We were getting into our brisk five minute warm-up walk - CORRECTION: Actually, I don't even think we'd even started that yet either! I was fooling around with my MP3 player when my foot got caught in the gap between the sidewalk and grass (edging?) and I totally just keeled/crumpled over. Tara was talking to me and she didn't even realize I was on the ground *LOL* It was a doozy, I completely rolled over my ankle as I fell and for a second there, I didn't think I was going to be going anywhere but the hospital to get my ankle check.
CONFESSION: After Tara hauled me up and my ankle was throbbing, I had a secret delighted thought that maybe I wasn't going to be running after all! BWHAHAHA, and then almost as if Tara could hear my thoughts, she was like, "Walk it off, you're running."
And walk it off I did. Thankfully, the throbbing eased up the more that I walked and I was able to complete the run! I was telling Tara that I thought we went up the hill a lot slower because it felt a LOT easier than it had on Monday, but nope...even with the added delay of my dramatic fall, I found that we were finishing our runs sooner than Monday and we still got back at exactly the same time (again, it would have been a few minutes earlier had I not wasted our time falling to the ground).
Since my MP3 player timing got messed up while I was busy falling, Tara was in charge of signaling the start and stop of the runs and when she signaled only one minute left of the last three minute run, I got all excited thinking that mama's comin' home with a new Polar! w00t! She rounded the corner ahead of me (I did fall behind - or if you want to look at it another way, she just ran faster than me) so when I got around the corner, she was already signaling that our last three minute run was done and instead of stopping, I decided to sprint the last few seconds to catch up with her! It was a funny feeling though, when I put on that last burst of speed, I couldn't really feel my legs. *LOL*
Anywho, we got back all triumphant and Nurse Tammy took care of my running injury.
That spray she used to clean it up was a mofo! It's not really as bad as it looks and Tara pretty much predicted that I'd milk it for all it was worth. I was hoping that the blood would run down my leg a bit more...it would have upped the dramatic factor walking in that way. *LOL*
Ah well! I'm all patched up and even though it is stinging, it's nothing new to the life of Cat.
But after all that anxiety and fear about going, I'm feeling mighty proud of us for going out there and gettin' 'er done! So I will just have to remind myself of the way I felt today when we start week four on Monday. Monday's are just evil all on their own anyway.
Tara's off tomorrow and Friday, leaving me to run the last run of the week by myself (I'm not even counting the treadmill run as an actual run) so I'm meeting the girls tomorrow at the gym and I'll do my run there - yes, on an evil treadmill, but I will suck it up and actually put it on an incline. That way, I can have my first Friday lunch off to actually have lunch!