You may be right. I may be crazy....
Jun. 11th, 2012 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI'd been noodling around this idea for awhile, but it's now taken on some relative urgency. Those of you who do this sort of thing can tell me just how out of my mind I am.
You may remember that I'd made a late and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to sign up for my first-ever actual outside racy thing: the country's oldest, the Turkey Trot, on Thanksgiving morning. My logic was simple: I regularly do 6 miles at a time on an elliptical, so an 8K race should be easy peasy. Plus, the Trot is as much a goof as it is a race; many run in costume, even more walk, or even stagger if they've gotten into the spiked cranberry juice before breakfast, so I didn't think much of embarrassing myself.
Then, a few weeks ago, an old-timey LJ friend signed up for an actual 5K, and was looking for advice. Many people gave her this particular idea:
Couch to 5K
Our beginner's running schedule has helped thousands of new runners get off the couch and onto the roads, running 3 miles in just two months.
What is it? One: an idea that probably every runner since Adam and Eve's Kenyan descendants first ran like hell out of the Garden. You mix walk and jog, at first more walk than jog, and over nine weeks, you convert it over session by session so, by the end, you're jogging the whole thing. Two: it's an app, which lets you time yourself and report your progress to your alleged gang of online fanz.
I downloaded the app- and promptly forgot about it. Kidney stones, unscheduled border crossings and 20-year-olds moving into your house will do that. But then came two bits of news.
First: my niece Nicole, who originally was as much of a couch potato as I ever was, has gotten over that and has run a number of races including at least a few half-marathons. She's planning one scheduled for my old home town, on the anniversary of her mother's death in October. I began thinking about working up to that through this program, probably timing a 5K and then a 10 for sometime over the summer.
Then it got even more interesting. Our beloved friend Kimmy, who's also run many times before, is planning to run a 5K at Darien Lake in but three short weeks from right this minute. We will definitely meet up with her, introduce her to the whole crazy fam, eat, drink and reminisce, but there's this bizarre opportunity to run alongside her for my de-butt event- if I can begin de-butting myself on about double this schedule to get up to 5K of endurance by the last day of this month.
One fact hasn't changed: I still routinely crank out 6 miles at a time on an elliptical- not without breaking a sweat, but definitely without breaking my equipment. I know, inside and outside are two different things, but I'm hoping the head start, whatever it's worth, will make the difference.
So tomorrow I begin noodling around with it. A five-minute "brisk walk" followed by a 20-minute mix of walk and jog. If I'm in traction by Friday, I'll call the damn thing off, but it's something I've at least got to try:)
You may remember that I'd made a late and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to sign up for my first-ever actual outside racy thing: the country's oldest, the Turkey Trot, on Thanksgiving morning. My logic was simple: I regularly do 6 miles at a time on an elliptical, so an 8K race should be easy peasy. Plus, the Trot is as much a goof as it is a race; many run in costume, even more walk, or even stagger if they've gotten into the spiked cranberry juice before breakfast, so I didn't think much of embarrassing myself.
Then, a few weeks ago, an old-timey LJ friend signed up for an actual 5K, and was looking for advice. Many people gave her this particular idea:
Couch to 5K
Our beginner's running schedule has helped thousands of new runners get off the couch and onto the roads, running 3 miles in just two months.
What is it? One: an idea that probably every runner since Adam and Eve's Kenyan descendants first ran like hell out of the Garden. You mix walk and jog, at first more walk than jog, and over nine weeks, you convert it over session by session so, by the end, you're jogging the whole thing. Two: it's an app, which lets you time yourself and report your progress to your alleged gang of online fanz.
I downloaded the app- and promptly forgot about it. Kidney stones, unscheduled border crossings and 20-year-olds moving into your house will do that. But then came two bits of news.
First: my niece Nicole, who originally was as much of a couch potato as I ever was, has gotten over that and has run a number of races including at least a few half-marathons. She's planning one scheduled for my old home town, on the anniversary of her mother's death in October. I began thinking about working up to that through this program, probably timing a 5K and then a 10 for sometime over the summer.
Then it got even more interesting. Our beloved friend Kimmy, who's also run many times before, is planning to run a 5K at Darien Lake in but three short weeks from right this minute. We will definitely meet up with her, introduce her to the whole crazy fam, eat, drink and reminisce, but there's this bizarre opportunity to run alongside her for my de-butt event- if I can begin de-butting myself on about double this schedule to get up to 5K of endurance by the last day of this month.
One fact hasn't changed: I still routinely crank out 6 miles at a time on an elliptical- not without breaking a sweat, but definitely without breaking my equipment. I know, inside and outside are two different things, but I'm hoping the head start, whatever it's worth, will make the difference.
So tomorrow I begin noodling around with it. A five-minute "brisk walk" followed by a 20-minute mix of walk and jog. If I'm in traction by Friday, I'll call the damn thing off, but it's something I've at least got to try:)