Secret to My Success

Okay, so after another lull, weeks of jogging once or twice, and finding nothing to keep me moving, I've found the secret to my running success! I read a book that made a lightbulb go off for me. It really contained no new information, but the focus was what made me have my "aha" moment!

I've followed the book's recommendations this week and amazingly, I look forward to my jogs, I'm feeling better, sleeping better, and want to run on my days off! :) YAY!

So what is this miracle secret Lara discovered? Sloooooooowing waaaaaay down! I know simple right? Well, for me, I felt like doing a program like Couch to 5k or something similar with graduating weeks of walk/jog combos, I should be able to run at a 10:00/mile pace when I was jogging. I only jog for a couple minutes at a time during the early weeks, so that shouldn't be so hard right? Well, I was huffing and puffing (not necessarily a bad thing), watching the seconds go by til I could stop running, and sometimes couldn't make it through the whole workout. I certainly couldn't wait til it was over and didn't look forward to the next.

Well I slowed down. Actually, I slowed way down. The point of me doing this is so I can build my endurance and run continuously without walking. That's my first goal. Then my goal is to build speed. Why do I care if I run a 13:00/mile? Why do I care what anyone else thinks of how I slug along? I admit, I would love to knock out a 10:00/mile, but right now, that's not realistic for me.

If I can stay focused on my goal of building my endurance and being able to run 30 continuous minutes, I will be ecstatic! Once I can do that, I can work on the rest. Right now, I feel good, I enjoy jogging again and am hopeful for my continued success. I'm currently only doing 4 minutes of walking, then 2 minutes of jogging, for 30 minutes total. On my last jog segment on Wed, I was outside and decided I would either jog til I got to my driveway or til I got tired, whichever came first. Well, my driveway came first (5 consecutive minutes of jogging!) and I felt like I could keep going. Tonight, it was til I reached a certain mile point on my treadmill or til I got tired and I ended up hitting that (7 minutes of consecutive jogging!) and felt like I could keep going!

All of that to me.....SUCCESS!