Running is a road to self-awareness and reliance … you can push yourself to extremes and learn the harsh reality of your physical and mental limitations or coast quietly down a solitary path watching the earth spin beneath your feet. But when you are through, exhilarated and exhausted, at least for a moment everything seems right with the world…

Monday, February 28, 2011

Forget Regret, Or Life is Yours to Miss

So I decided to title my blog entries with either song titles or song lyrics that I enjoyed, or songs that motivated me while running. That way, by the time I'm done training I'll have a decently long playlist compiled.

Today was quite the rough day. I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night (not sure why) and I had a midterm. I went to work from 7-10 and then found out my morning class was cancelled, so I came home to "sleep." I don't sleep during the day. Ever. So I just laid in my bed with my eyes closed for a bit. Then I went and took my geometry midterm, which I think I did well on. I got done with class an hour early hit the gym, even though I was exhausted, because I won't be able to go the next 3 days due to engagements with CEHD undergraduate student board, the alumni society, seeing a play for class, happy hour at downtime, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1. I'm going to try to make it on Friday after work, Saturday morning (easy workout,) and Sunday night.

I timed myself today. I pushed myself for the first mile and my time was 10:20. The second mile I took extremely easy and my time was 11:30. So I'd say 11:00 is decently close to what my time would be if i truly paced myself.

I started doing research and found out that there is no half-marathon for the Twin Cities Marathon, but there is a 10 mile option. Otherwise I'm currently looking at this half-marathon as another option.
http://www.trail-loppet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1

On a side note: I hate treadmills and cannot wait for the snow to all melt away and it to be about 50 degrees so I can actually enjoy running outside again.

The Beginning

This starts the beginning of my very first blog. I've been wanting to start one for awhile, but just haven't had anything super exciting going on in my life. I guess I still don't, but I'm going to start one anyway. Saturday night I had a nice talk with one of my best friends co-workers and he convinced me that since I love running so much I should start training for something. That night I made a conscious decision to start training for a Marathon. After further thought and conversation with others I decided that perhaps a half-marathon would be a better idea since I've only been running for about a year, and have hardly run at all this winter. I convinced one of my best friends to start training with me last night, and so it begins! In this blog I will post running times, write about my pleasure and frustration with training, and will probably comment a lot about the music that keeps me going. You may also see posts about my stresses with classes, and posts about my utter "freak-outs" about my future. Feel free to leave comments and to give me advice. (I'm a novice at both running and blogging, so I'll need a lot of it.)

My whole enjoyment of running started last summer after a seriously "bad" breakup. I say "bad" because it wasn't awful, just long and drawn out. I used running as my outlet for all my anger and frustration, and grew to actually enjoy it (as long as I have my iPod.) 

I have no idea what my current running time is. At the end of last summer it was around 10:15 or 10:30, so I have a lot of room to improve. I started a workout plan in January and have gotten my mile time on the elliptical to be about 9:30, with my best time being 9:07. If i had to guess my actual running mile time I'd say it's about 11:00 (maybe higher.)

Current Goal: Have my mile time down to 9:45 by the end of March, and lose 5 lbs, by the end of July.
On a side note: Another goal I've had for quite some time is to cut some of the sugar I eat out of my diet, and just eat healthier in general. I also need to start getting more sleep at night. 5-6 hours just isn't going to cut it anymore. 

Alright people! Here we go!!!