What I blog about when I blog about running

17 January 2009 in Health, Life

The following blog post may come off as some sort of New Year’s resolution, but it’s not, I tell you.  It just happens to coincide with the new year.  So there.

At the beginning of this month, my friend Rebecca and I signed up for a 5k to take place on April 4th.  Do I run?  No.  Am I even in good shape?  Not really.   Never having run a race before, I’m not really sure what to expect.  But, according to their website, here’s what I should expect: “Fabulous post-race party with mini spa treatments, catered brunch, live music, shopping and more!”   Yippee!  I can do that.  Absolutely I can.

But I mustn’t forget about the whole “race” part of this 5K RACE.    So, I’ve started this Couch to 5K plan to help me ease my way into running, since until recently, running a mile for me would probably consist of me walking the entire way, and maybe even stopping at a Starbucks for a grande skinny vanilla latte half way through.  The best part about this c25k program, as they call it, is that random people on the interwebs have made podcasts to listen to while you’re doing it, different files that go along with each week of the program – they tell you when to run and when to walk, so you don’t even have to think about it, or time yourself with a stopwatch or something.  In the podcast I chose, a masculine robotic voice counts down from 5 to 0, letting me know it’s time to switch it up from a walk to a run, or vise versa.  Unfortunately the music in a lot of the podcasts available out there isn’t that great – and I’d eventually like to make my own indie rock n’ roll couch-t0-5k podcast, but I will save that for another time.   Until then, I’m using this one.  It’s a pretty good mix of a few different genre’s, and it’s the closest I can find to my taste in music.  

And to make this whole debacle even more exciting, my friend, Mel, let me buy her Nike+ from her (thanks dude!).  I’ve used it twice already, and it’s super neat-o.  A sensor attaches to your shoe, and the receiver attaches to your iPod.  The sensor talks to the receiver during your workout, keeping tabs on your pace, distance, speed, etc., and keeps the data for uploading later.  See my pretty, pretty graphs?

I must’ve walked faster during my second workout, because there’s less variation in speed between my walking and running.  But I suppose that’s possible.  I had the dog with me too, so maybe a few of the pee-stops contributed to the dips in the first graph.  Or maybe it’s just not very accurate.  I don’t know.  But it’s pretty fun, and I like to see data, you know?  So I think I’ll keep using it.  I can’t even believe I didn’t know about this Nike+ thing before!  I might’ve started using it long ago so I could be all technologically advanced or whatever.  Imagine how skinny I could’ve been like months ago?!  I must say though, I’m feeling good because of all this.  

I guess that’s good for now.  I have a wishful-thinking-sxsw blog post in the making, so you should see that sometime soon.  Happy New Year!