I had an interesting experience tonight. One that I was hoping wouldn't happen, but I'm glad that it did because it made me realize something about myself. It wasn't life altering or mind blowing, and most people probably would have just not thought about it, but I did. Maybe just because it's giving me something to blog about, but that's beside the point. Tonight, for the first time since I started Couch to 5K, I didn't complete a workout running the whole time.
Up until this point, everything that they've thrown at me, I've done. To most people, it's probably not a lot to run 5 minutes, but for me it is. So when I finished the walk 5/run 5/walk 3/run 5/walk 3/run 5/walk 5 workout, I was really excited and proud of myself. After finishing though, I told Matt that I thought I would need to do it a couple days in a row to feel comfortable before going ahead to the next workout. But today at the gym, I felt really good and compared it to what today's workout was (walk 5/run 8/walk 5/run 8/walk 5) and decided to go with the latter. I was getting cramps toward the end of the first run, but made it through and felt way better when I started the second run after walking the 5 minutes. But by the time I was 5 minutes into the second run, I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it. My cramps weren't as bad as they'd ever been, but my legs felt like they were going to give out and I was genuinely afraid of tripping and flying off the treadmill in an America's Funniest Home Videos-esque manner. And seeing as how I am definitely not a fan of humiliating myself/potentially seriously injuring myself, I decided to slow it down and do a walk/jog until I could get back my bearings and jog for the last two and a half minutes.
I'm a little bummed that I can't say that I've made it through every workout now, but I think I realized today that I do have limits and I know where they are. That's not to say that I'm going to keep stopping whenever I'm tired and not push myself anymore. In fact, on the contrary, I'm pretty sure the opposite will be true and I will push myself harder than ever because I don't want to not make it through a whole workout again. I'm just glad that I realized that I do have limits and while I love pushing them, I had to realize that at some point it stops being "pushing the limits" and starts venturing into the realm of hurting myself and I don't want to take it to that point.
Since I obviously was not ready to go to the next workout, I'm going to go back to the previous one and try to increase my speed there as well before I go back to the 5/8/5/8/5 and then to walk 5/run 20/walk 5 (which is mildly terrifying). I am excited though, because I'm pretty sure that up until this year, if you had asked me if I would ever even attempt to run again, let alone run a 5K, I would have laughed in your face. Now, I've found something I truly love that only motivates me more and makes me feel like I can do anything - including get down to a weight that I haven't seen in years. It's going to be another challenging few months (probably more than few, even) but I am excited. I can't wait to keep going and see where I end up. Ultimately, I want to shock people; I want people who haven't seen me in a significant amount of time not to recognize me. Hopefully I get there. I think I will. :)
And on that note, I'm off for the evening.
Tschüss!
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