dawson's running history

So, after about two full weeks off without going running or to the gym, I am glad to be back.  I want to say that SOME things were out of my control that kept me from working out, but some was just me getting lazy at the end of the year.  It felt really good to start up again though, and I think the time off has helped me get excited about it again!  So, here is to a new year!!

Getting back into the running. So far so good.

Although I have been stretching, I am getting a weird pain in my lower hamstring, right above the back of my knee.  I kind of feels like a good soreness, but at the same time it feels like it could cramp up on me at any moment.

I have been running the same distance each day but trying to do it in a faster time.  Since this is my first few days back after two full weeks off without running, I start off slow and then speed up.  So far I have taken about two full minutes off of my time from the first day.

So, as ashamed as I am to even log this distance, I need to do some expaining.  This run was the same night that I did my first ever spin class (I am typing this two days later).  As I started to run, I got the worst cramp in my side that i have had in a very long time.  That spin class killed me!!  I am afraid to think of how my legs would be doing if they had no conditioning at all!  Two days later, and I am super sore.  Hopefully I can get them to loosen up before the 5K on Sat.

Today was another practice for the 5K this Saturday.  I finished in about 29:15.  I hope that the fact that it is a race will help me go a little faster.  We will see...

Today was the most distance that I have done for a good three weeks or so.  It felt really good, and it made me excited to keep going.  I am bummed that I stopped training for the half this Saturday.  On the bright side, I have never run a 5 K before, so it will be good to see how I do.

This was my first 5K, and I had a lot of fun!  In training for this race, I was never able to get my time under 29 minutes, so I was very pleased with my finishing time.

Today was a good run.  It felt good to do more than a couple of miles.  I would like to work back up to doing 25-30 miles a week,

Today was a real milestone day for me, and I have been waiting all day to write about it!!  I think other than races, today would be in my top five runs for sure, and the wierd thing is that it was on a treadmill!

So, I was telling someone at my work who used to run marathons about my first experience with the 5K.  He said that when he was running, he knew lots of people that would sign up for 5 or 10Ks to use as training runs for marathons.  He told me that lots of times they would use them as speed or interval runs.  So, I decided to try something like that for my run today.  I knew that I would be running for a full hour on the treadmill at the gym, so here is what I did.  I started out warming up for one mile.  I am pretty sure that I was going about 6.5 MPH by that point, but I don't know what the time was.  Then, I sped up to 7.5 MPH for the next 1/2 mile, and then I brought it back down to 6 MPH for 1/4 mile.  I just repeated that for the full hour.  When I hit minute 59, I took it all the way up to 9.5 MPH until the cooldown started.  By the end of the 60 minutes I had gone 6.83 miles!  Up until this point, I have never been able to get more than 6.57 miles out of an hour on the treadmill.  I honestly cannot remember being this giddy (I know, I said giddy) about a run since I first started.  The best part is that the time flew by, and it was probably the most fun indoor run that I have ever done.  I am super excited to try it again next week!

I was really excited to do a run outside today, but a freak storm came through St George this afternoon.  I was acctually on my way home to get ready to go out when it started to get windy and dark outside.  I guess it is a good thing that I was running a little behind schedule, since we ended up getting hail and even some snow this afternoon! Had to run on the treadmill instead.

I ran 1.25 miles on the treadmill at the gym.  Then my sister showed up so I decided to lift with her.  When we were done, I got back on, and was surprisingly sore, so 2.75 more miles is all I could do.  It was wierd, becuase I didn't feel like I was going too hard either time...?

Tonight was another run on the treadmill :(  I guess one way to look at it is at least I went for a run right after working a 14 hour day, most of it on my feet too!!!!

I tried to do this run on the treadmill like a speed workout again( like I did last week), but I think I was feeling a bit tired.  I missed last weeks mark by about .13 of a mile.  At least I was able to get a little distance in.