What's On My Mind

For my BLC Weekend Challenge, I need to blog about what's on my mind....so from a health perspective, here goes:

I'm on the last day of the last week of the 5 Week 5K Your Way Spark Challenge. This means I am supposed to run a 5K (3.1 miles) tomorrow. While I have seen a great improvement in my ability to run for several minutes at a time, balanced with gradually less time walking, I'm pretty sure that it will take me an hour to run 3 miles!

For example, the previous day's task was to walk 2 minutes/run 3 minutes for a total of six sets. Thirty minutes, right? But in that 30 minutes I only went 1.8 miles. Is it really an achievement to run a 5K in an hour? In fact, my guess is it might take me longer because I'll wear out and end up doing more walking than running.

Sigh. I think perhaps I will start this Challenge over again once I've done my virtual 5K. My daughter ran cross country and I know she was young and trained all time, but she did 5Ks in 18 minutes. I obviously need LOTS more training!

On the brighter side, I have enjoyed testing myself and starting jogging again. I used to run years ago but ended up with knee surgery and a long recovery. The ortho finally told me I should stick to walking to be safe. Blah! I'm taking it really easy this time and not pushing myself if I feel any pain at all in the knees and I do love the great rush I get when I've finished my workout.



I'll add an update after I've crept through my 5K, just to share the end of the story.

Wish me luck!

UPDATE: I ran my virtual 5k in 49:52, which is slightly better than an hour. I'm thinking of either starting this 5k challenge over at this same level or maybe trying the next level up. For now, I am going to take a few days off from heavy running and do some tai chi and weight training.