Running on empty

[eimarra]

Empty of excuses, anyway.

Those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook (Hi, Mom!) may not know that I’ve started a running program, the Couch-to-5k. This is a nine-week program designed to take people from being couch potatoes to running for 5k (about 3 miles or 30 minutes). This is accomplished through interval work — alternating jogging and walking — while gradually increasing the total amount of time jogging or running. I’m now in the second week.

Physically, I’m doing better this week than last week. My first run (in the pouring rain) I could barely finish, even walking two of the running intervals. My legs felt like rubber, and my entire body was sore on Tuesday. I’m now managing to complete all of the intervals, and the only portions that tend to stay sore are my hips.

That’s probably not going to change, even at the end of the program. I am handicapped. My left ankle is fused, and I’m missing most of the calf muscle for that leg. I can’t push off with the ball of my foot, and I can’t land properly either — so most of the work is coming from the hips. Yesterday, my ankle felt sore all day, and my foot hurts.

Let’s be honest. My foot almost always hurts. I can’t walk barefoot around the house because of the pain. That’s just life. Even if I can run for 3 miles, 5 miles, or 20 miles, I’m always going to be handicapped.

Which is okay, as long as I remember it’s no excuse to stop trying.

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[david-bridger.livejournal.com]

You're doing a difficult thing and you have my admiration. Keep going!

[eimarra]

Thanks, David! 2/9 of the way there now.

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

Ouch. For me, 5km is something more like...let's calculate it. 400m/3 minutes per lap, so 12.5 laps and 37.5 minutes. I'm not sure I'd be able to pull it off in 30 minutes yet, and I think I remember the days when it took me more than 40 minutes to go that distance.

(Now that I think of it, building my stamina from 2.5 laps to 12.5 took something like three or three and a half years. So if you're anywhere like meeting the goals of the program you're obviously improving faster than I was....)

[eimarra]

Well, we'll see how I'm doing at week 9. I know I'm not running anywhere near as fast as I used to. My route this morning was 2.9 km according to Google Maps -- which isn't bad at all, given that I'm only running about 9 minutes of 30 at this point. Interesting note: Google Maps claims that the route is walkable in 35 minutes. My husband might manage that, but I certainly wouldn't.

And the way this program works on building stamina is to focus on the intervals -- the first week, I only ran 60 seconds at a time, recovering for 90 seconds between each; this week, it was 90 second runs, recovering for 2 minutes between each. That means the time run went from 8 minutes to 9 minutes. Not a huge leap.

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Maybe that was the difference, since my Saturday morning jog was a straight jog with no walking intervals (and no five-minute warm-up walk, though I might have got that anyway in the walk between the public transportation drop-off point and the athletic track). I probably would have improved faster if I had known of this program back then.