Starting Running... Again

So I started running again yesterday.  At the post op appointment I had on Tuesday, my doctor said that I could start exercising again, so I decided to go RIGHT into it.  If it wouldn't have been like a million degrees outside when my appointment was over, I probably would have started right then.  Why so enthusiastic?  Well, it's not that I'm totally addicted to running. (I do LIKE it though.) Honestly, I was just really worried that I would never go running another day in my life if I didn't start up immediately.

This time around, I'm going to do it differently.  First and foremost, I'm going to try to do what I didn't do before.  LISTEN TO MY BODY.  I pushed myself way too hard last time and ended up getting injured by hurting my knee very early on.  I know the whole cyst/surgery mess was what forced me to stop running, but I probably would've had to take a break anyway with how much I was hurting.  The last two days that I've gone running, I've started with a warm up where I walk for about five minutes and then do some stretches.  It's worked well.  I have a teeny tiny bit of soreness that I can tell is related to the surgery, but I'm really fine besides that.  I haven't gotten new running shoes yet, but I'm waiting to see if I can keep this up AFTER the school year starts before I make the investment.

If I can continue some sort of running routine at least a week into school, then I will reward myself with a pair of shiny new running shoes.  I saw the Potomac River Running store near the new Cobb theater the other week, so I'll probably go there to get an evaluation done.  Hopefully its not ridiculously pricey because I'm feeling broke with all of the costs of finishing the basement.  (I'll be posting some pictures and blogging about the basement progress soon, but you can check out the album on Facebook for right now.)

I stuck with my same neighborhood routine from last time of two miles and I've been feeling GREAT afterward.  I seriously get depressed in the summertime when I don't have anything to do.  Running gives me this burst of energy throughout the day and I feel SO much better!  The funny thing about starting up again is that my legs totally itch while I'm running, but I remember that from last time and I think it will go away soon.

Here's a picture of the sunrise this morning!

Honestly though, it is super hard to get out of bed.  Knowing that it is summer and I can totally sleep in until noon if I like, makes it hard to get the motivation in the morning.  I've been getting up at 5am with Doug the last two days and STAYING up.  I have to literally force myself out of bed and into my closet to get into my running clothes, but after that I'm usually ready. :)

This morning when I went out it surprised me how dark it was.  It was seriously scary and depressing at the same time!  Scary, because it feels like something is going to jump out at you with every tree and bush you run by.  Depressing, because I know this means that the days are getting shorter and summer is almost over.

That leads me into a question that I've had in the back of my mind... How do you continue your running routine in the winter?  We have a treadmill that my parents gave us in the basement that works well, but I seriously hate running on it.  Is that the only solution or are there like hardcore ice runners out there. :)

Running FAIL

Last week after I posted my "Report on Running" I hurt my right knee.  I'm not actually sure when I did it or if I had been running on a bad knee, but it hurts and swells whenever I even walk on it now.  I've been limping around for the last week and icing it and it's just now barely getting to the point where I don't get shooting pains from walking.  It's been extremely frustrating because I just barely got to the point where I was enjoying running and looking forward to it each morning.

For those of you that are starting an exercise regiment, you probably should do some sort of warm up and get yourself a good pair of shoes if your going to get serious about it. Both pieces of advice I was going to take, but didn't get the chance to until I was injured and swollen.

I was going to dedicate a post to my running partner in the picture to the right.  This white kitty would run alongside me for a good portion of my running back when I was running.  Whenever I would stop, he would rub up against my legs and want to be pet.  I do not know who he belongs to or if he even has an owner that cares about him.  I want to adopt him.  I'm thinking about putting a sign around his neck that says something to the extent of, "Does anyone own me?"  I've been able to go on one walk since and he was there waiting for me in exactly the same place.  I was bad and brought some food to feed him later.  He ate it, but seemed more interested in being pet than eating the food.  Unfortunately, that's probably a pretty sure sign that he has an owner.

I'm dealing with some other health concerns that I'll probably blog about later.  My doctor told me that I shouldn't be running, so I think I'm going to have to put the running talent on hold for a while until I am healed which hopefully is in the next month or so.

Report on Running

Those are runnin' legs!

So I blogged in this post about my desire to become a runner and I just wanted to report back to tell you how I am doing.  

The first two days that I went running I had no clue how far I was going.  I just wanted to start running, so that's what I did.  Before going to bed on day two, I talked to Doug about my running and told him I wished I knew how far I was going.  He told me that there was a free app that I could download on my phone that would use GPS to calculate the distance of my run.  REALLY???  So before I went to bed, I found and downloaded the app.

The next morning, I was very excited to start my run.  My biggest worry was that I was only running like a half a mile because I really had no clue how far I had really been going.  So I ran the same route as I had the two previous days and checked the app for the distance. I had been running 1.8 miles a day!!!  So, I went ahead and did 0.2 more miles so I could make it an even two miles.  That was really good news to me because I honestly thought I had running been running maybe a mile.

After I finished my run that day, I saw that it had taken me 26 minutes to go the two miles.  I hadn't even thought about timing myself!?  So the next day I wanted to see how long it was taking me to run just one mile of my run.  I found out that it was taking me a little over 12 minutes to do the first mile of my run.  Each day I ran, I pushed myself just a little harder to see if I could get a faster time.  My fastest mile so far has been 8 minutes 45 seconds, but most days I'm between nine and a half to ten minutes.

As I run, I give myself short term goals and landmarks.  When I start getting tired, I look for a landmark in the distance. (a tree, a fire hydrant, a car, etc...)  I push myself to get to that landmark and then I try to go another ten paces or so if I can.

It turns out that my estimate of being able to run for "only two minutes at a time" in my last post would have actually been good.  I didn't realize until I was actually timing myself that in reality I was probably running in bursts that lasted maybe a minute and half.  Now two weeks later, I can run for a little over two straight minutes.

I took this picture with my phone during one of my runs.

I don't listen to music when I run.  Not yet, at least.  I'm thinking about getting a shuffle or something, but I'm feeling broke because I'll be spending all of my personal savings on finishing the basement.  So right now I'm just enjoying listening to the sounds of nature around me.   My housing development in the middle of the country and we are surrounded on three sides by farmland.  I run early usually around 5:30am because that's right after Doug leaves for work.  The crows are usually cawing and a few birds are singing.  The roosters crow every morning when the sun comes up and there's usually fog in the fields.  One morning I was pushing myself to finish my mile at a faster time and I wasn't watching where I was running.  I almost ran into a herd of deer!  It really scared me because there were suddenly a bunch of them running all around me.

So I've been keeping track of my running as a form of accountability to myself.  I usually run two miles a day.  I ran four miles on the 6th because I was trying to reach a 20 mile goal.   Then, I went running with a friend on the 8th after my morning run to try to push myself and see how I was doing in comparison.  My friend runs two miles, but does more prolonged running stints than I do.

This is my running calendar so far.

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
May 26	27	28 1.8 miles	29 1.8 miles	30 2 miles	July 1 2 miles	2 2 miles
3 2 miles	4  2 miles	5 2 miles	6 4 miles	7 2 miles	8 4 miles	9 2 miles
10 1.5 miles (walking)	11 2 miles	12	13	14	15	16

The biggest problem I've been running into lately is that I'm SO STINKING SORE!  For the first six days, I had been running like I felt came naturally to me, but my shins had been bothering me.  A friend of mine at church that is a runner told me since I had just started running that I should train myself to run the correct way.  I researched it a little and I've been running more on my toes than on my heels. (if that makes sense)  I think it's called the POSE method or something and its supposed to help reduce injury.  When I started that I was actually feeling A LOT better after running, but my calves were a sore instead of my shins.  I'm pretty positive I'm not doing it the right way because I am seriously the least coordinated person in the world, but I AM trying.

I didn't want to lose any momentum, so I've been forcing myself to go out EVERY DAY.  I'm worried that if I take a break one day that I won't start up again.  I keep on saying that I'll run through the pain and wait for my body to catch up with me.  Yesterday (Sunday), I was feeling particularly sore, so I asked Doug to go on a walk with me instead.  Today when I ran, my pace was a lot slower, but I actually started to feel better as my run progressed and I finished in 10 minutes.

I'm sore, but I still feel energized by my run, so that's a good thing.  I just hope this achy stuff dies down a little so I can feel good again.

On a side note: Happy 27th birthday 7/11 to my main man, my dearest hubby, my one and only DOUG!  :)

Trying Something New

A couple Sundays ago, half of the Sunbeams didn't show up for one reason or another, so I got to go to Relief Society.  The lesson was on Developing Our Talents.  This lesson is probably one that I have had maybe a billion times at church, so I wasn't really expecting much.  The teacher followed the manual pretty closely and allowed others to share personal experiences.  She shared a simple list about how to develop our talents:

1. Discover our talents
2. Spend time and effort to develop our talents
3. Have faith that Heavenly Father will help us and have faith in ourselves
4. Learn skills necessary to develop our talents
5. Practice our talents
6. Share our talents

I'm really bad with details, but the teacher told us a story about discovering our talents (not out of the manual) that really got me thinking.  The gist of the story was that there was a person that had trained all of their life to be one thing, but then they suffered an injury that kept them from doing that, so they started something completely new and now they are REALLY famous for it.  Dang, I am a bad story teller, but I swear I knew who the person was (because they are really famous) and I was like, "Wow, if they hadn't gotten that injury, then we never would have seen this talent that they're famous for."

Then, the sister next to me, told a story about how when she was pregnant with one of her children, her husband was away at sea, she was getting restless, and needed something to do.  One day, she decided that she would like to paint.  She had never taken a class in her life and knew nothing about painting.  She brought a painting kit, took a couple classes, and she found out that she is an amazing artist.

So I started thinking... 

Is there a talent that I have that I haven't discovered yet? What if my undiscovered talent is like REALLY cool?  I think I should try some new things!

So, out of all of the things I've decided that I could do, I decided that I wanted to be...

a RUNNER.  

I know for many of you that doesn't really seem like a talent, but exercise.  But, I think that runners are awesome.  What a cool talent!  Not everyone can run... I sure can't.  I wish I could be a runner, but I've never actually tried.

Until yesterday, I had never gone out and walk/jogged/ran by myself a day in my life.  The day before, I was talking to my teacher friend on the phone and she was telling me how productive her day had been AFTER she had gone for a run.  When she had called, I had just woken up from a three hour nap in the middle of the afternoon and I had done NOTHING but eat waffles and cereal, check email/Facebook, and play with my iPad. Hearing about her productive day and mentally comparing it to my own was enough.  I decided that the NEXT morning I would start running. 

So, yesterday morning, I got up, put some exercise-like clothes on and went running.  It was THAT simple.  For some reason, the weird part was leaving the garage and STARTING.  I've always seen people running through the neighborhood, but I've never seen someone start their run.  So I did, and guess what?  It wasn't bad.  In fact, I woke up this morning and did it AGAIN.

During my summers off, I usually get sleepy around 11am and want to take a nap.  Most days during the summer unless I have other plans, I usually do take a nap.  The last two days that I've been running in the mornings, I get this unexpected energy boost and I feel great afterward.

The logical side of me also tells me that this is a way to become healthier.  My body is a temple.  I should be taking care of it better by exercising and eating less bacon cheeseburgers and spicy chicken sandwiches.  I'll start with the exercising part and work on the food part later. :)

I'm hoping that I can keep it up at least for the summer while I'm off school.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll like it and become good at it.  I kind of stink at it right now and can only run for like 2 minutes at a time, but I guess its a start.

I've always been the type of person that let experiences find me.  I think I'm going to start seeking out new experiences.  I'll want to try new things and not worry about failing.  Maybe along the way I'll pick up a new talent or two.