I've taken up running again. Since moving to St. George, my main sources of exercise have been basketball and cycling to work, but neither has happened much for a long time. My ward just couldn't get behind basketball, and I tired of the low turnout, so I quit that. Cycling only works in spring and fall. I quit cycling early in the spring because of Julia's imminent arrival (no one wants to get the phone call at work that the baby is coming and then have a 20 minute ride in the hot sun to get there!). Then for the fall, I moved further away from work. It would be 30 + minutes to get there now. So, I'm running. This is also spurred by Brian, who has been running lately. I've had a good time reminding him how I used to run much faster than he does, but really, I know that he could out run me right now.
Yeah, health, weight, etc. None of those are good enough to get me running again. But get me to be competitive w/ Brian and suddenly, there I am. So I'm running . . . but slowly. Really, I'm out of shape. But, thankfully, it gives me something to blog about. I've been twice. Here's the update:
Trip 1:
My plan at the start is to run for 20 minutes. I set my watch for 10 minutes and run away from my house, and then when the time is up, I turn around and come home. The first trip led me 1.07 miles away (all stats are from Google Earth, unless I say otherwise) with a net elevation gain of 124 feet. The return trip was only 1.01 miles; I didn't quite make it back in my 10 minutes. At that point, my lungs hurt, and I felt pretty bad. That's 9:37 per mile. Ouch. I knew it would be bad, but I didn't think it would be that bad.
Trip 2:
Same plan. Same route. I came up just short on the way out, but more than made up for it on the way back. Instead of coming up a half dozen houses short of home, I made it a block and a half past home before the 10 minutes was up. And, I feel tired, but not ready to die. I could actually speed up at the end. A lot of the improvement is just from not going too fast at the beginning. Anyway . . . that's 1.02 miles out and 1.11 back. 2.13 miles total for 9:23 per mile. 14 second improvement. So that means . . . . about 3 weeks and I can run 6 minute miles, right?
Sometime soon I'll have to take out my GPS and check it against my straight line approximations from Google Earth for distances. At least I know that the numbers I get from Google Earth are minimums for distance, so if anything, I'm faster than I think.
5 comments:
When I took up running last year I started off at 12 minute miles, and was down to 8 minute miles in less than two months.
I was surprised by how slow I was at first, and also by how quickly the times came down.
I went running outside for the first time in many months this morning. I expected to die after about 1 1/2 miles but I made it just over three. A full 5K in fact! I nearly died. "They" claim that it took us (me and two other girls from my gym) about 25 minutes, but that is very fast for me, the girl timing us might have been smoking something.
I use google maps pedometer to figure out the milage. It shows the inclines too.
Keep running, and when you come to visit me in Texas, we can race!
Slow and steady wins the race... you can do it!!!
Yeah, regarding my comment above, I'm now 99% certain that my run took me 35 minutes. I try to sound cool, but I'm not!
I made it onto Clark's blog! How cool is THAT?!!
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