C25K: W2D3, Thursday, July 24, 2008

And week 2 is finished with today's workout!

I struggled in the middle 2 intervals, but did complete all running intervals (though someone who really runs would say I was probably shuffling more than jogging). Now it's on to W3D1 in Maine on Saturday. Looking forward to that, if only for a change of scenery. I will say, though, that I'm going to miss the bike path for running when I move.

I'm a little nervous about Week 3 - but what was going through my head when I felt like I was struggling this morning was, "At least you're healthy enough to be out here complaining about running! If Karen can finish a half-marathon with an injury, you can certainly power your way through a few 90-second (or 3 minute) intervals." And so it went, and I finished the workout.

And congratulations to Karen for running the Napa-to-Sonoma Wine Country Half-Marathon in support of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation this past Sunday! With friends who have run a 10k race and a half-marathon recently, I have no excuse for not doing my C25K workouts.

I figured out that if I just do a C25K workout every other day, I will finish the program on Thursday, September 4, just in time to run the race on Sunday, Sept. 7.

I felt so much better today mentally knowing I'd done my workout this morning. You'd think that would propel me out the door on the mornings when I have a workout scheduled.

Ah, well, no sense dwelling on what I didn't do, and focus on what I want to do for the next month and a few weeks! Looking forward to my run/walk on Thursday!

C25K: W2D2, Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Well, hello there! It's been 20 days since I did a C25K workout. As disgusted as I am with myself over that fact, I just need to let that go and keep on moving.

Beautiful morning to go out for a run. Decided to try a different podcast, and I liked the music quite a bit.

6 intervals of 90-second runs followed by 2 minutes of walking, plus 5 min walk to warmup and cooldown.

2.34 miles.

I already have running clothes packed for my trip to Maine this weekend, and will be running on the path in the Back Bay on Saturday morning. I might sneak in a run on the beach on Sunday morning, too.

W2D3 on Thursday. And on to week 3 on Saturday! I'm going to try to do workouts every other day to catch up a little on my slackerness of late.

Tag! I'm it!

From Karen:

Copy the rules (or your version of them) and the set of questions onto your blog post, provide your own answers and then tag at least 5 new people. If tagged, you’ll find your name at the end of this post.

To be sure everyone tagged knows they’ve been invited to play, go to their blogs and leave them a comment notifying and referring them to your blog for details.

Lastly, once the chosen have answered the questions on their own blog, they should come back to yours to tell you.

Here are my responses.


1. How would you describe your running 10 years ago?

Completely nonexistent. I've always said I hated running. I feel ungainly when I run, all limbs that don't know how to work together. And I would have felt that even more so 10 years ago, when I weighed somewhere north of 200 lbs and was in horrible physical shape. I found racewalking in 2002 as a result of wanting to move more quickly without resorting to running.


2. What is your best and worst run/race experience?

I haven't run a race yet. I'm supposed to do that in less than 2 months! But I racewalked (and jogged, a little bit) most of the competitive 4-mile course of Racine's Lighthouse Run a few weeks ago. This is what inspired me to try C25K, seriously this time. Being surrounded by all of these runners made me want to run a race and finish it. Which I am currently slightly failing at, but that's another story, and I'm nowhere near epic fail status, so I just need to climb back on the wagon.

3. Why do you run?

Running, for me, represents stepping outside of my physical comfort zone. I can bench press 45-50 lbs reliably. I can do back and front and overhead squats with a 45# bar. I can do jumping pullups, and modified pushups, and air squats. I know how to do a clean and a jerk and a push-press and a deadlift. I finally learned how to swim a few months ago. I have racewalked a 10:30/mile pace. I can push myself physically. And every time I was confronted with the 400-yd run in a Crossfit workout, I would groan, cringe, think about running, and then racewalk instead. When I start Crossfit again in September, I want to be able to run the running portions of workouts. Doesn't have to be quickly, but I want to solidly be able to run them.

4. What is the best or worst piece of advice you’ve been given about running?

The best thing I've seen is for motivation - if you want to give up, allow yourself to do that once you get through the next 30 seconds, to the next curve in the road, till the next song comes on the ipod. More often than not, once you get there, you'll renegotiate the next possible stopping point. And you won't stop until you're done. It works for me.

5. Tell us something surprising about yourself that not many people would know.

I've gained almost 20 lbs. in the last year. I will have been away from Crossfit for a year by the time I get back to a Crossfit affiliate. Part of my struggles in the last year with my weight have been because of leaving Crossfit Milwaukee. I tried to find ways to motivate myself toward physical activity on my own, but it all fell apart because it wasn't Crossfit. I am hoping that C25K will provide a reasonable substitute in the next couple of months. I have resolved to walk into Windy City Crossfit in September and go through the beginner program again (after a year, I've lost all that I built up over 4 months last year) and start reliably doing workouts.

I want to do, with C25K, what I did with Crossfit - stick with it and see the results. I'm trying to find a way to get workouts in and still work the hours I need to at work. This week, work's been winning. Hoping to get out for a run tomorrow at least.

Musings on C25K pacing

I just calculated it out -- if I actually manage to keep on pace and don't repeat anything in C25k, I will finish C25k on August 25. That means 5 of my last 6 workouts will be while we're in CA for the wedding/honeymoon. :) The last 3 workouts are all 30 min runs. Then I'll do 4 more 30 min runs through the following Wednesday. I'll take it easy Friday, and run the race Sunday. :)

But that also means I can repeat a week somewhere in here if I need to and still complete the program before my race.

Oh, my new running shoes are the Asics Gel Cumulus 10. I also got some Wigwam running socks, and the combination is making my feet happy. No blisters yet, which I would have noticed, even on these short days, if something wasn't right with the combo.

C25K: W2D1 - Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Yay! Week 2 has begun. And I completed Day 1 of it! Beautiful morning out there - worked out between 5:40 & 6:10 am. (wanted to take photos, but I have enough to do to concentrate on running. Can't shoot photos: running.)

Completed 6 90-second intervals of running, alternated with 2 minute walks, and a 5 min warmup & about 7 min cooldown. Total distance: 2.45 miles.

A little bit of a push to get through the 90 second jogging intervals, but not too bad. Felt good out there. Shin wasn't really giving me lots of problems, though I will try the toe taps to strengthen things.

C25K: W1D3, Monday, 6/30/08

And today was day 3 of week 1 of C25K. I was supposed to complete day 3 yesterday, but I napped instead of running. And I'd rather be on a M/W/F schedule anyway.

I went 2.29 miles in 30 minutes (5 min walk for warmup, 8 intervals of 60-second run and 90-second walk, and 5 min walk for cooldown). Beautiful afternoon for a workout between 5:10 and 5:40 pm along Racine's lakefront.

We'll see how day 1 of week 2 goes on Wednesday.

Biked for an hour at the Y while waiting to go to yoga class. And yoga has been cancelled. It's the summer slowdown where enrollments are lower because people are doing other activities. So, no more yoga for me until I move to Chicago. At least now I know I want to continue doing it.

My exercise-induced asthma flared up a bit. I've been able to hold off on using my inhaler thus far tonight, which is a good sign.

Oh! I got new running shoes. They're Asics, which is a brand I have never worn, but today was the first workout with them and thus far, they seem to work fine. They're an 8.5W, which I have a harder time finding. My beloved New Balance 763s, which I wear for racewalking, are 9M. My right shin was bothering me a little today, and I suspect it's adjustment to running more than the new shoes, since I noticed it a little bit on my workout last Thursday.

I imagine my legs are going to hurt tomorrow. It's a good kind of pain. It tells me I'm doing something active. :)

My Relationship to Exercise, by Kelly Z., age 33.67 years.

I wanted to talk a little bit about how I came to this point, in terms of a fitness and exercise perspective. This is likely to be long.

As a kid, I wasn't terribly active. I ran around, like kids do, but I wasn't into sports. I was the kid picked last for team things in gym class. A lack of depth perception will do that to a kid. So, I resigned myself to the fact that I Wasn't Athletic. I tended toward reading, the Speech & Debate Team, and other such pursuits. I always wanted to be more athletic, but figured I was just one of those kids who wasn't lucky enough to be able to be.

I was not one of the popular kids in school. Far from it. I was fortunate, then, that I was proportional in height and weight, and weighed 125 lbs when I graduated from high school. I somehow had a warped body image and thought I was overweight. What I wouldn't give now to be 125 lbs! It's all about perspective.

Then I went off to college, and gained 20 lbs. Then I gained 20 more by the mid nineties. I went through a lot of things in my early-to-mid twenties, and by 1999, I weighed 217 pounds. On a 5'6" frame. I was far more than overweight. I look at photos from that time, now, and I hardly recognize myself.

In early 2000, I met my now ex-husband, and by the time we were married, in mid-2001, I was down to 185 lbs through moderate activity and trying to watch what we ate (and, somehow, despite frequent meals at the Indian place and Anthony's Pizza when we lived in Malvern, PA in 2001, I gained no weight while in PA -- didn't lose any either, though.).

My ex had a tendency toward extreme activities, once something captured his interest. So, he discovered racewalking in 2002, and, me being me, I tagged along, wondering what this was all about. He is a great endurance athlete -- he can go for hours at a steady pace. I am a sprinter -- I tend to vary through an activity, but can pour it on at the end. But with racewalking, I ended up being the one to grasp proper form more quickly. I adored racewalking. I did racewalking from April through September of 2002, before I was sidelined by a hip injury. I'd come down to about 155 lbs at that point. I started off racewalking 15-minute miles. By the time I got hurt, I was able to steadily keep up a 12:30 pace or so. Sometimes, 11:45.

I put on a few pounds that winter, but racewalked them back off in the summer of 2003. I kept racewalking, through the winter, and into 2004. I racewalked my first 10:30 mile that summer, and by October of 2004, I was not racewalking in the back of the pack. That was when I figured out that, with the right activities, I could consider myself moderately athletic.

Then I stopped racewalking for various reasons, and put on 20 lbs by the summer of 2005. That spring/summer/early fall, my ex decided to go off and thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. He completed his thru-hike in early September, and I hadn't lost a pound. He came home, worked for a bit, and went off to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail in the summer of 2006. I still hadn't lost a pound.

We hatched a plan for both of us to pack up everything, put it in storage, and go thru-hike the Appalachian Trail together. I lost 20 lbs between November 2006 and April 2007 just by regular walking 4-6 miles a day. The thru-hike failed after a week (For all the athletic things I am capable of doing, thru-hiking held little joy for me), and my marriage was over, too. Which turned out to be the best thing for me.

I came home and tried to pick up the pieces. Because I was (wrongly) trying to save the marriage, still, in May 2007, I joined the next thing my ex found: Crossfit. I found an amazing program, that I stuck with, every day. I had lost another 8 lbs by October, and was feeling great.

But by October, my divorce was final, and I'd met someone new. When that happened, any pretense of getting along with my ex went out the window, and I lost Crossfit. I stopped exercising then, and tried, in fits and starts, through the fall and winter, to get myself back on the wagon.

This nice boy that I met proposed to me in January, in the Bahamas, and I, of course, accepted. It's nice to be with someone who supports me and appreciates me for who I am. At any rate, while in the Bahamas, I skipped out on snorkeling, because I didn't really know how to swim, and was afraid of the water. That spurred me, finally, to take swimming lessons in April. After a couple of months of lessons, I can now do basic swimming, so I've conquered something I thought I couldn't do.

I went and bought a bicycle, and shall be riding it this summer. But what I am focusing on for the next couple of months, is learning to run. I know I can do it if I put my mind to it. So, this 5k that I am raising money for is the way to help me keep my mind on the end goal. To run a 5k. Then to run more than that.

Someday, I'd love to compete in the Danskin Chicagoland sprint triathlon. That's the far off goal. More immediate is to run a 5k. Which I will do. On September 7. To honor and remember people who have become important in my life, even if I have never met them. :) Ah, the power of the internets.

A while back, Sean got me a magnet for my fridge. It says "Yes, I'm a girl. Yes, I'm an athlete. Yes, I'll kick your butt." I want to feel like I live up to that magnet. That's another part of why I'm doing all of this.

Looking forward to my run tomorrow, and (hopefully) completing week 1 of C25K!

Why did I choose the MMRF race as my first 5k?

So, as I said, in my initial post, I have no direct experience with Multiple Myeloma. But its impacts on people are something I've become quite familiar with over the last couple of years, from a few different spaces.

I would guess that the first time I ever heard the words "multiple myeloma" were from my friend Rachel. At one point, Rachel and I lived a few hundred miles away from one another, and we met, like so many significant relationships in my life, on a text-based BBS so many years ago that I don't remember how many it was. More than 10 years, certainly.

Rachel has supported me through some of the happiest and saddest times of my life, and she supports her friends in the same way she seems to approach life in general: with a quiet wit and grace and a sense of genuine friendship that I have long wanted to demonstrate myself.

Rachel's father had multiple myeloma, and my heart broke for Rachel many nights, as I would sit at home and read about what the disease was doing to her father, her stepmother, and to her. Rachel's father passed away on April 20, 2008. I intend to run this race in memory of Rachel's father, Robert, and in honor of Rachel and her stepmother, Hedy.

In early 2006, I decided to learn how to knit (this is not the non sequitur it appears to be, honestly!). I tried to teach myself, but ended up taking a 6-week class at my local yearn shop, Fiddlehead Yarns. (I'm going to miss Mindy and the shop when I move to Chicago!)

And in my nights of scouring the internet for knitting information, I ran across the blog of Annie Modesitt. At the time I started reading her blog, she lived in New Jersey with her husband, Gerry, and their two children. I loved reading about her family and their pursuits as much as about Annie's knitting, teaching, authorship, and other activities. I read the blog avidly as they prepared to uproot and move to Minnesota, and read about what the transition was like after they moved. And after they moved, Gerry was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. I've continued to read the blog, waiting for the next update, amazed at this family and their resilience. I'm running this race in honor of Annie, Gerry, and their two children.

In trying to decide on a race yesterday, I found out that another friend's grandmother is battling multiple myeloma, among other things. I'm running this race for Carrie and her family.

That makes up 3 specific points of contact that I am aware of surrounding multiple myeloma. And I knew that this would be the 5k race I would choose. I want to help raise funds for research, as I know cures can't be found without research. I am fortunate to open my eyes each day and be healthy enough to be able to go out for a run, walk, or bike ride. I'm running this race to honor my own strength and determination.

The best part about this is that I know I will finish the race. I can racewalk if I have to (I think I racewalk faster than my jogging pace, right now, sadly enough). But I'd like to cross the finish line having run the whole thing. So, that's my goal. To run the whole race.

In another post, I'll tackle more about my own background with fitness and exercise.

C25K: W1D2, 6/27/08

Got up bright and early for day 2 of week 1 of C25K. It went well. Except for the mosquitoes who tried to carry me away, that is. But I swatted away and got my workout in.

I ran/walked my local library loop, which Map My Run says was 1.98 miles, but I'm going to round it to 2 miles in 30 minutes, which is 15:00 mile pace. Nowhere to go but up from here.

Like Wednesday, I walked a 5 minute warmup, 8 60-second runs interspersed with 8 90-second walks, and a 5 minute cooldown.

I felt better today than I did on Wednesday, actually. My breathing wasn't as labored, but it was more humid out today than Wednesday. My legs felt it more, as did my lower back, but it was reasonable. My last interval felt pretty nice. I was also glad to be done when it was over. :)

On to day 3 of week 1 on Sunday.

Workout from 5:40 am to 6:10 am.

C25K: W1D1, 6/25/08

Yesterday (Wednesday) was week 1, day 1 of the C25K program.

I downloaded the podcasts recorded by Robert Ullrey for the program. I find the cues helpful, and the music suits my purposes just fine.

I'm still trying to figure out Map My Run to know my distance yesterday. I'll get that done at some point.

But even if I don't know how far I went, I do know that I ran for 8 minutes and walked for 12 minutes, along with a 5 min warmup and cooldown.

I ended up doing about a half-hour of other walking as well.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow with Day 2 of Week 1. Everything has to start somewhere.

Workout between 6:10 pm and 6:40 pm.

Genesis

I'll chronicle the whole story in a later post, but for now, this is the first post in my running blog. Suffice it to say that running and I have never been friends, but I'm determined to complete the Couch to 5k program
in the next couple of months.

I've upped the stakes, signing myself up for my first 5k race, on September 7. I'll be fundraising to support the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

Although I don't personally have any experience with family members with Multiple Myeloma, the disease has affected friends of mine. Having lost a cousin to breast cancer (she was in her late twenties), I fully believe in the importance of cancer research.

So, I now have more motivation to keep training. I want to complete my first 5k race on September 7. I hope you will follow my progress as I post to this blog, and I thank you for your support (whether that's mental/emotional or financial).

If you can contribute to my fundraising efforts, I have an online donation page all set up. I am also more than happy to receive offline donations. Email me at kelly_zito (at) yahoo dot com, and I will give you my postal mail address.

I'll be working on a longer post about my path to this point, as well as updating the blog each day that I do a C25K workout.

Again, thanks for stopping by!