My adventures in starting to run
Ok here I am. Who am I? I'm a beginner runner. If you told me last year that I would be even attempting to run in 2005 I would of bet you $ that you were wrong. If you told me that I was going to attempt to run a 5k in September of 2005 I would of checked you into a mental institution.
How did I get here? Well I had my third and last child last April. On January 3rd I weighed myself and I was a discusting pure fat 165 lbs. Yeck. Weirdly enough I was 165lbs in early December also. No matter what I ate or drank I stayed the same. Hmmmm. Anyhow on January 3rd I attempted to do Weight Watchers on my own. The first month was great. I lost 5lbs easily. (probably 3lbs was muscle) In February I took my daughter to her first swim lesson at a health club near me. This was my exercise awakening. While she was in the pool an extremly overweight (ok obese) woman got into the lane next to her. First I was impressed that she would be seen in a bathing suit. Next I was curious as to what kind of swimming she was going to do...I was thinking backfloat. Well that obese woman starting doing freestyle and flipturns. She glided throughout the water. That was all I needed to get my semi-fat ass into the gym. If this obese woman can get her big butt in that pool I can do same. A new me was born!
I started at the gym the next day. Lucky for me I get a free membership through work. I did the whole goofy tour of all the equipment and learning all the cardio machines. I felt like a fat loser. Looking back I did everything wrong for about a month. But I learned on my own and through watching the low body fat/muscle people.
My early days were:
2x 3x a week
treadmill 30 min at 4.7
some attempt at resistance training (what a joke)
1/2 hr swimming
Did I mention that I was a serious swimmer for about 10 years when I was a kid. I love swimming. When I first started at the gym I would do breast/free and back. No flip turns. (that was then)
In March I decided that I wasn't losing any weight. I joined WW for the 3rd time in about 5 years. My goal was 10% of current weight (161.2) so that is 145.2.
Then I got on the internet and researched weightloss through exercise. My favorite site is www.weightlossforall.com.
My whole gym experience has changed from February. I do leg resistance training first, then stomach, then arms then once a week speed intervals (8.5 - 4.5) on the treadmill and once a week a 20 min swim.
The running part. This whole running thing started out as fast walking. Probably started in March 2005 sometime. My neighbor and I would fast walk about 4.1 miles 2x a week. It was fun. We chatted about stupid/serious/funny things and felt better about ourselves. Then in April we started talking about adding a little run in. Looking back now it was pretty pathetic. We ran about 2 min and about died. But once that run was in place we never took it out. Soon we started adding onto it. Then once while crossing a highway/street to get to the park we had to jog across it. Well we kept jogging. We couldn't take that jog out either. Soon I heard about HIIT (high intensity interval training) I thought we could put a little HIIT into our walk/runs. So we made up our own HIIT. After each run we had a set point where we had to sprint as fast as we could to a certain point. Again, once those were in place they couldn't be taken out. Though we have modified them...increased the running distance and always have the sprint at the end. In June we went crazy and obsessed about our running. We did it everyday. What did that accomplish? My running partner (K) started having hip problems, I was getting calf cramps. That is where we are now.
How did I get here? Well I had my third and last child last April. On January 3rd I weighed myself and I was a discusting pure fat 165 lbs. Yeck. Weirdly enough I was 165lbs in early December also. No matter what I ate or drank I stayed the same. Hmmmm. Anyhow on January 3rd I attempted to do Weight Watchers on my own. The first month was great. I lost 5lbs easily. (probably 3lbs was muscle) In February I took my daughter to her first swim lesson at a health club near me. This was my exercise awakening. While she was in the pool an extremly overweight (ok obese) woman got into the lane next to her. First I was impressed that she would be seen in a bathing suit. Next I was curious as to what kind of swimming she was going to do...I was thinking backfloat. Well that obese woman starting doing freestyle and flipturns. She glided throughout the water. That was all I needed to get my semi-fat ass into the gym. If this obese woman can get her big butt in that pool I can do same. A new me was born!
I started at the gym the next day. Lucky for me I get a free membership through work. I did the whole goofy tour of all the equipment and learning all the cardio machines. I felt like a fat loser. Looking back I did everything wrong for about a month. But I learned on my own and through watching the low body fat/muscle people.
My early days were:
2x 3x a week
treadmill 30 min at 4.7
some attempt at resistance training (what a joke)
1/2 hr swimming
Did I mention that I was a serious swimmer for about 10 years when I was a kid. I love swimming. When I first started at the gym I would do breast/free and back. No flip turns. (that was then)
In March I decided that I wasn't losing any weight. I joined WW for the 3rd time in about 5 years. My goal was 10% of current weight (161.2) so that is 145.2.
Then I got on the internet and researched weightloss through exercise. My favorite site is www.weightlossforall.com.
My whole gym experience has changed from February. I do leg resistance training first, then stomach, then arms then once a week speed intervals (8.5 - 4.5) on the treadmill and once a week a 20 min swim.
The running part. This whole running thing started out as fast walking. Probably started in March 2005 sometime. My neighbor and I would fast walk about 4.1 miles 2x a week. It was fun. We chatted about stupid/serious/funny things and felt better about ourselves. Then in April we started talking about adding a little run in. Looking back now it was pretty pathetic. We ran about 2 min and about died. But once that run was in place we never took it out. Soon we started adding onto it. Then once while crossing a highway/street to get to the park we had to jog across it. Well we kept jogging. We couldn't take that jog out either. Soon I heard about HIIT (high intensity interval training) I thought we could put a little HIIT into our walk/runs. So we made up our own HIIT. After each run we had a set point where we had to sprint as fast as we could to a certain point. Again, once those were in place they couldn't be taken out. Though we have modified them...increased the running distance and always have the sprint at the end. In June we went crazy and obsessed about our running. We did it everyday. What did that accomplish? My running partner (K) started having hip problems, I was getting calf cramps. That is where we are now.
posted by m at
1:06 PM
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