I think I can....no, I know I can!

So here's my new schedule:
Saturdays I do a long, slow run, trying to increase the mileage by 0.5 miles each week. I do this at a slower pace than normal.
Mondays, I'm going to do a maintenance run, which is whatever mileage I just covered on Saturday, but at a quicker pace.
Wednesdays, I'll do a speed workout, which currently is running about 2.5 miles while alternating walking 0.25 miles with running at a fast for me pace for 0.25 miles. I'll likely add some hills or increase the incline on the treadmill this week or next also.

I just started this last week. Saturday was my longest run yet, which was 3 miles. In looking back, I cannot believe that 9 weeks ago I could barely do 90 seconds of running! So on most days when I feel slow as a snail, I need to focus on how far I've come.

Today was very good! I went 3 miles again, but I ran faster than I've ran before. I normally run a 12:00 mile pace (5mph), so today I decided to try 5.3 mph for as long as I could go. I kept going to 1.5 miles, then increased to 5.6 mph for another .5 miles. I then was pretty pooped, so walked a couple minutes then started in again. I took another walk break around 2.5 miles, but other than the 2 short walk breaks, I never ran slower than 5.3mph. Overall, with my 2 minute warm-up and the walk breaks I did an 11:30 pace, which is a 30 second improvement! Great news is I still have 3 more weeks to the alumni race, so my goal of 22 minutes is looking more and more attainable all the time!

I have made some changes to my diet also. After doing some reading, I don't think I was eating frequently enough. I've added more fruits and veggies and complex carbs to my diet also. I lost weight last week and I continue to think that my legs look a bit better. I read an interesting tidbit about how women store fat. Men tend to store fat in a layer over their muscles, so it's easily noticeable when it's occurring. Women store fat in the small spaces in between muscles and when those are all filled up, then they start storing fat in layers. So by the time a women notices fat on their legs, hips, butt, etc, they actually have a lot of fat already stored amongst their muscle also. So when I started exercising, the lean muscle I was building was getting rid of all the small fat deposits amongst my muscles instead of the large deposits. Interesting to me! I also read the most effective way to turn sugar burning cells into fat burning cells. So, hopefully I'll continue to see weight drop and inches to decrease!

Overall, I have to say that I'm so amazed at how this is going. I never thought I would stick with this! I'm so glad I started. I actually look forward to my workout days. I tried adding a 4th running day, but legs just aren't ready for that yet. I'm going to add some sort of cross-training in though because I feel like a slug on days I don't run.

I have went from thinking maybe I can do this running thing to knowing that I can do it and the only person it really matters as to how fast or slow I go is me! And right now, tonight, I'm pretty proud of me.