I did it!

PLACE IN DIV. AGE GROUP NUM. COMPETITOR TIME PACE
293 55/77 Women 30-39 4908 Stephanie ******** 48:01 9:37

Workout 1, Week (7) 8

Duration: 30 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 8 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 4 minutes running.....not sure what happened after here. Just ran by listening to my body.

Reps: 1

Distance covered: 3.07 km

Pace: 6.14 km/hr

Difficulty: first time running after more than a week off.

Calories burned: 250

Workout 1, Week 6

Duration: 29 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 5 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 8 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 5 minutes running

Reps: 1

Distance covered: 3.00 km

Pace: 6.20 km/hr

Difficulty: Fastest average pace so far! If I can keep this up I should be able to run a 5k in 48 minutes.

Calories burned: 268

Workout 2, Week 5

Duration: 26 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 8 minutes running, 5 minutes walking, 8 minutes running

Reps: 1

Distance covered: 2.62 km

Pace: 6.04 km/hr

Difficulty: 8 minute intervals!!! Easy-peasy at 4-4.2 miles/hour. Need to work on speed as I am not gaining much distance when I run for equal times.

Calories burned: 212

Workout 1, Week 5

Duration: 26 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 5 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 5 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 5 minutes running

Reps: 1

Distance covered: 2.60 km

Pace: 6 km/hr

Difficulty: First time running 3 5-minute intervals. Could have picked up the pace a bit but will attempt that next time.

Calories burned: 217

Workout 2, Week 4

Duration: 26.5 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 3 minutes running, 1.5 minutes walking, 5 minutes running, 2.5 minutes walking

Reps: 2

Distance covered: 2.59 km

Pace: 5.86 km/hr

Difficulty: Ran a little slower today and had a lower heart rate overall. Need to push further next time. Workout 3 this week will be outside!

Calories burned: 220

Workout 3, Week 4

Duration: 26.5 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 3 minutes running, 1.5 minutes walking, 5 minutes running, 2.5 minutes walking

Reps: 2

Distance covered: 2.68 km

Pace: 6.06 km/hr

Difficulty: Took almost a whole week off (crap!) so started back where I was last week. Had very little difficult picking up where I left off. Hooray! Total workout with cooldown was 2.92 km in 30min with 259 calories burned.

Calories burned: 237

Workout 1, Week 4

Duration: 26.5 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 3 minutes running, 1.5 minutes walking, 5 minutes running, 2.5 minutes walking

Reps: 2

Distance covered: 2.65 km

Pace: 6 km/hr

Difficulty: Changed up my shoes to see if that would help with the ankle pain I was still having. It did! Also, ran my first 5 minute stretch (2 times) and it FELT GREAT. At the 25 minute part I thought I was done but needed to run an additional 1.5 minutes - just kept going like...I even decided to do an official cool down so my total workout stats are 267 calories burned, 2.86km covered in 30.5 minutes for an overall pace of 5.62km/hr

Calories burned: 247

Workout 3, Week 3

This should have occured on Friday but I allowed myself to skip it. Why??? I have no idea. Stupid thing to cave in to myself so quickly. Will NOT happen again.

Workout 2, Week 3

Duration: 25 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 90 seconds running, 90 seconds walking, 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking

Reps: 2

Distance covered: 2.44 km

Pace: 5.85 km/hr

Difficulty: I have a strong suspicion I didn't write down the distance properly. I remember having 1 minute to go and feeling like I wasn't going to reach Tuesday's distance of 2.46 km. I will take is as it is written, though.

Calories burned: 238

Workout 1, Week 3

Duration: 25 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 90 seconds running, 90 seconds walking, 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking

Reps: 2

Distance covered: 2.46 km

Pace: 5.9 km/hr

Difficulty: Had to run 3 minutes straight this time. Had thoughts of cutting the first 3 minutes short but didn't! In fact, I even added on 2 additional running minutes at the end of the 2 reps.

Calories burned: 253

Couck to 5k - Summary of the first 2 weeks

Two weeks down!!!

14.48 km covered - which is 2/3 of a half marathon distance

156 minutes on the treadmill - 2.6 hours

Average Pace: 5.56 km/hr

1539 calories burned.

I feel both 1)AWESOME! and 2)PETRIFIED that even though I have been successful in all of my workouts so far it has only been a drop in the pan.

I would be interested to see what next week brings and the running time doubles to 3 minutes in a row.

Hypothetically speaking, if I were to keep up this pace it would take me 3.75 hours to finish a half. Not bad, really.

Wiorkout 3, Week 2

Duration: 25 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 90 seconds running, 120 seconds walking

Reps: 6

Distance covered: 2.47km

Pace: 5.93 km/hr

Difficulty: Struggled through today. Guess I learned my lesson on why I shouldn't pig out on chips and candy the night befor a workout. But still finished without slowing my pace so HA!

Calories burned: 272

Workout 2, Week 2

Duration: 25 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 90 seconds running, 120 seconds walking

Reps: 6

Distance covered: 2.47km

Pace: 5.93 km/hr

Difficulty: Had to push workout till after lunch which I think made for a slow start. Still finished very good, though.

Calories burned: 257

Workout 1, Week 2

Duration: 28 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 90 seconds running, 120 seconds walking

Reps: 6

Distance covered: 2.46km

Pace: 5.9 km/hr

Difficulty: I wasn't able to run as fast during the 90 second run but I only felt like I couldn't finish the rep 1 time (cut just over 5 seconds of the run time) but overall doable!!!

Calories burned: 263

Workout 3, Week 1

Duration: 28 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 60 seconds running, 90 seconds walking

Reps: 8

Distance covered: 2.52km

Pace: 5.4 km/hr

Difficulty: Significantly less soreness than last run. I added on a longer cooldown which increased my calories burned but slowed down my pace.

Calories burned: 266

Workout 2, Week 1

Duration: 25 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 60 seconds running, 90 seconds walking

Reps: 8

Distance covered: 2.31km

Pace: 5.54 km/hr

Difficulty: Less ankle soreness than last time. I think I may benefit from insoles and I tend to roll on my feet a lot.

Calories burned: 251

Workout 1, Week 1

Duration: 25 minutes

Warm up: 5 Minutes

Interval: 60 seconds running, 90 seconds walking

Reps: 8

Distance covered: 2.25km

Pace: 5.4 km/hr

Difficulty: Soreness in ankles starting around rep 5 but otherwise doable.

Calories burned: 230

Well Crap!

Reminder: When starting your training make sure to bring your gym passcard with you or you will be unable to access the gym. Running outside would have been an option had I bought an interval trainer. Schedule for this week is now Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Crap.

Starting tomorrow

Tomorrow is the first day I start training for my couch to 5k. I am entirely confident that I will make it through this week just fine. I have a new playlist to put on the ipod, have written down my 'routine' in multiple places so I can't use "I didn't know what I had to accomplish" as an excuse, all gym clothes are washed, and I have no sense of dread going into this.

I can do this.

Couch to 5k - Week 1

My first step taken to train for this 1/2 marathon is to run (RUN) a 5k. There is a local race on September 12th that, in theory, I should be able to train for no prob if I follow a 2 month plan. So...here we so.

Starting Monday and for 3 times the same week I will:

Briskly warmup for 5 minutes
Alternate 60 seconds of jogging with 90 seconds of walking
for a total of 20 minutes.

My thoughts...easy-peasy!

Will update success next Friday. Wish me luck.

What have I gotten myself in to?

So...In some strange and alternate universe I decided it would be a good idea to try and run or run/walk a half marathon. Interesting in that

a) I can only run 2 minutes at a time MAX right now
b) I am a big girl(Low end of the Biggest Loser scale but big none the less)
c) I don't like to run/exercise/exert myself

What better way to motivate myself? I picked a run in Las Vegas that I could conveniently combine with a little well needed vacation.

This one.

I plan on keeping up this blog to not only track my progress but to also look back on if I do finish this 1/2 marathon to see just how far I've come.