Progress!

As most of you know, I’ve been running for a couple of weeks now and I finally feel I am getting the hang of it. Yeah, I know, it took me a while :) But like I said in my first post about this subject, running isn’t a thing that comes easy to me. I always thought I couldn’t do it, but hey, here’s a newsflash…..I can!

The first couple of weeks were quite horrible at times though. You have to remind yourself of so much like: keep your arms low and relaxed, breath in and out (duh!) and keep your breathing relaxed and regular, don’t run too fast (you are not running a race!), don’t land on your toes – heels first and so on and so on! A lot of stuff to take in and keep track of, but hey, I am doing it. Hooray! Even my personal (uhum…. Online and not so personal) coach/motivator is telling me I am doing great and that I should keep going!

I am keeping a log of my runs and here is a graph that shows my progress. I started out at fitness level 10 and now I am at 40 after completing one-third of my schedule. Hooray again!

There is a downside though; I am starting to feel better and look healthier but I am gaining weight. That wasn’t supposed to happen :( At first it got me worried a bit but then I realised that it actually made sense. When I started running I stopped doing my other work-outs on the running days. In the first weeks I didn’t run for very long period’s of time (and was eating the same) so I was burning lesser calories then normal. *sigh of relieve* nothing to worry about! Pretty soon I will be burning calories like before and probably even more. I think I’ve to put off buying new clothes for a while :) because like I said, I am gaining weight but I am loosing centimetres already :) Well, isn’t that a nice advantage?!

Life never stops to amaze me.

Isn’t it amazing how you can have a really lousy Sunday (or week actually) and an almost perfect Monday?

Yesterday I spend most of my time reading (a very depressing book, which I have locked away in a very deep cupboard now) and surfing the web trying to find more gift ideas. I actually found a couple of brilliant suggestions, but some are actually a bit too expensive so that depressed me even more. By the end of the afternoon I was getting so depressed I was getting ready to lock myself away in a cupboard too. But I didn’t! I turned the computer off and cooked a nice meal, enjoyed it and watch some old funny and romantic comedies.

Today I felt a lot better. My run, this morning, went amazingly well. My hay fever has disappeared now that the temperature dropped and that is helping a lot too! Afterwards I had a shower and folded my laundry while listening to the radio. It’s Pinkpop weekend and again, none of my friends (sometimes I wonder why these people are my friends) wanted to go, so radio, TV and internet is all I have to keep track of the festival. This morning I heard this (skip to 00:35) and all I can say is ……goose bumps! Although it made me feel I was really missing something, it also made me wonder what the band (Krezip) was feeling at the time. It must be amazing to sing just one line and then be drowned out by the crowd. Superb!

In the beginning of the afternoon I hopped on my bike and went to the local discount garden centre. It’s a really nice trip and the wildflowers growing next to the bike path really put a smile on my face.

This Highland cow (her sisters were around too) broadened my smile even more. So much nature (on the way back I saw and heard a woodpecker too) in a city! Woo hoo….it just blew the last lingering gloomy feelings right out of head.

I bought four cheerful flowering plants and jumped on my bike again for the pleasurable ride home. I didn’t get very far at first though, because a car pulled up beside me and followed me at a low speed (I really hate it when people do that, but maybe that is just me being paranoid). As it turned out the guy just wanted to ask directions. He had to go to the racket centre. So I pointed him in the right direction and he said ‘but I just came out of that street and didn’t see the centre’.
Me: ‘Well, you must have missed it then, it’s just across the street from the garden centre’
He: ‘Really, I didn’t see it’
Me: ‘But you must have, there are a gazillion cars parked in front of it. There is some sort of paranormal fair going on’
He: ‘Oh, that’s where I am going’
Me: ‘Guess you shouldn’t bother then’
He: ‘Why?’
Me: ‘Well, if your gift can’t feel all that paranormal energy, it’s probably useless’
He laughed really hard and said: ‘your right! But I am just lousy in finding my way, I am lucky if I can find my way home again’
Me: ‘Get rid of your gift and just get yourself a Henk Henk (a bit of Dutch humour, the thing is actually called a Tom Tom Go)’.
He laughed again and totally agreed. Next he turned the car around, thanked me with a big grin on his face and left. So nice to make a stranger laugh and smile like that!

On my way back I started thinking about my Mom’s upcoming birthday and all the gift ideas again. I am still having a hard time picking the right one, but I do think I have a solution if I can’t make up my mind. When every attempt to pick and choose fails, I’ll probably do this. I’ll get a gift box and fill it with 75 cards(or envelopes). On every card I’ll write an idea (of course I would cheat and write some of them down more than once). I’ll give the box to my Mom and let her pick five cards, with the option to swop them if she doesn’t like her first pick. Next she can pick her own present from the five cards. Maybe not the best solution, but at least that way I’ll be sure she gets a gift she really wants.

I don’t like Mondays.

I’ve just completed today’s run and it really was a bit of a struggle. One of my feet hurt, I couldn’t breathe right (hay fever) and in the end I wasn’t able to complete the whole run (missed the last 30 seconds). It’s the same story every Monday. I’ve even started to dislike the runs on Monday a bit because they always seem to be quite a lot harder then the other two (on Wednesday and Friday). Maybe it’s the weekend. I am not supposed to train on those two days and I am starting to feel that instead of skipping two days I should only skip one, so my new schedule would look something like this: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Monday and so on. That would mean I’d to run 7 times in 14 days instead of 6 in 14 days. It would also mean that I am ignoring all the great advice like “don’t overdo it and take time to rest” and that would be really stupid now wouldn’t it? Hmmz… guess I am going to stick with the original programme for now. Maybe it’s just a temporary thing. Maybe the Mondays will get better eventually. Let’s just wait and see. Anyway, I am not ready to give up yet!

And now I am off doing a typical Dutch thing, I am going to celebrate Koninginnedag! I am going to visit the local ‘freemarket’, in other words look at a lot of junk, and watch some local bands perform.

Have a great Monday everyone :)

An absolute beginner.

In last Friday’s post I told you all that I had changed my exercise routine around and added something new. Oh my, how exciting, I can almost hear you think but, it’s not that exciting. At least, not to most of you. For me however it’s quite a challenge and a new experience, because it’s actually something I cannot do. I know, because I’ve tried it in the past. So what am I doing? RUNNING!(three times a week.)

I actually started to RUN and I am in my third week now! Okay, I’ll admit it, at first the whole running thing looked more like jogging, but according to all the sites I’ve consulted (Libras love a bit of research) that’s how most of the runners start out. They say the first step (and stepping outside in your running gear)

(a picture of my actual first step)

is the hardest, but I’ve discovered that the ones that follow that initial step aren’t a walk in the park either.

Of course I did make all the beginners mistakes: started out too fast - so I was exhausted after just a few minutes, used my old shoes which I had been using for walking, had the wrong socks, used the wrong schedule and so on and so on. So, you can most likely imagine that first week was a real hell, but then I decided to spend some money on good equipment. *sigh*

I always thought that running was one of the less expensive sports, but boy was I wrong. A pair of decent running shoes will set you back at least a 110 euros. Luckily I was able to find a runners shop with a sale on; all last year’s models with a 50% off. Hooray! Who cares if they aren’t fashionable (are running shoes ever?)! I also invested in Coolmax socks, which work wonders for my feet, and then al that was left was a different schedule.

At first I was using a podcast, according to the description very suitable for beginners. I’m not sure what kind of beginners they were thinking about, because I just couldn’t complete the whole first run. After my opening run I felt really depressed and I thought to myself ‘Man, if I can’t even complete this one I am never going to succeed’. The rest of the day I spend sulking, not really sure what to do next, but then it hit me, there just had to be some other schedule that I could follow. So, I went online and there it was, the “from couch to 5K” schedule :) a programme in which you alternate running and walking.

The first week: I ran 10 and walked 40 minutes
The second week: I ran 18 and walked 52 minutes
And this week: I already ran 14 and walked 35 minutes and there is still one more run to complete this week, so I think I am seeing some progress here. Huzzah! For now, I am sticking with this schedule and, who knows, maybe later I'll change back again to the Start to Run podcasts. I am one happy chica (oh my…..lady, I mean) right now. And you know the weirdest thing happened the other day…..: I discovered that I am actually enjoying this whole running, or should I say starting to run, experience :)
Who would have thought? As a kid I never liked sports (I always managed to get out of PE) but I’ve been working out these last couple of years and now I am even starting to enjoy running. Age comes with strange new habits ;)

Oh and I did discover an interesting site Gmap Pedometer: a little hack that uses Google's mapping application to help record distances travelled during a running or walking workout (but you probably already know about that).