Then, I Died a Little Bit

For awhile I've been thinking about starting the Couch to 5K program.  Honestly, I have no idea why.  I'm not athletic, have never run, and am not much on being hot or sweaty.  But I just got it in my head that I'd like to say I ran a 5K.  It was one of my goals at 30, so during my shopping trip the first weekend in May I headed to the New Balance store for new shoes.

The next Saturday morning dawned bright and hottish, and I downloaded a C25K app on my phone and headed out.  Then, I died a little bit.  Literally.  I had not felt well when I got up and should have known better than to try to do anything with my crazy sugar issues without having plenty in my stomach.  I did half the running, returned home, laid out in the recliner, and demanded water.

This, minus the hair.

While that was terrible, I was back out Monday night.  In a frigid, cold wind.  In the rain.  I did 2 jogging cycles before realizing I have no sick days left to be running around in the rain.  I came in and did the elliptical until the rain stopped, then went out and did 4 more jog/walk cycles before the rain started again.

Technically I should be finishing my 3rd week of the program.  However, a slow first week, an all elliptical night due to pouring rain, and another wasted Saturday morning attempt {mornings are not my thing apparently} put me a little behind.  Also?  My walks around the neighborhood in the years since I've had kids have not really produced the cardio effects that they needed to.  I spent about 2 weeks on week one.

Then, just as I started seeing improvement, feeling proud, and not hating every step of jogging, my knees started hurting out of the blue.  That was last Wednesday.  They still hurt on Friday, so I stayed with week 1.  I took off 2 days to no avail, and went out Monday and did Week 2 Day 1 with relative ease.  That's 6 sessions of jogging 90 seconds at a time.  For you that may be no big deal, but when I started that night I had no confidence that I'd jog 90 seconds period.  I was proud, and I was in pain.

I haven't done any walking/jogging since Monday.  I'm taking Advil to get through my days at school.  My knees are fine unless I'm walking, and I do a lot of that on hard floors during the day.  I've consulted my real-life running friend Anna, my blog running friend Courtney {who has dealt with knee issues}, and my friend Kristin who's a sports medicine major.  She's going to check my knees, shoes, etc. this weekend and show me some things to do.  Everyone has had great advice, and 2 out of the 3 have said I should continue training.  But my knees hurt.  Tonight I did our elliptical and had no pain doing that.  I'm hoping that I have 2 problems that are easy to fix: flat feet (so much that they cause my knees to turn inward) and weak leg and butt muscles.  I did not buy the insoles that they tried to sell me at the New Balance store, so I'm going to order those and focus on strengthening in a low-impact way while praying the pain will go away and stay away.  If not, I'll be off to the doctor, Fleet Feet for a custom analysis, or both.

I didn't blog about starting C25K because I didn't know if I'd like it, and I didn't know if I'd be able to do it.  Then I started and almost died.  But now I'm a little hooked, and 90% of the time I'm determined to fix whatever the problem is and keep going.  The other 10% of the time I'm sure I'm doomed to double knee replacements and water aerobics.  I do know that I'm enjoying the exercise {a biggie for me}, and I'm bummed that I've hit a bump in something I'm motivated to do.  My goal was to be able to run the entire September Color Run, but my friend Anna is running the Esprit de She 10K in Cary in June, and I thought it would be a splendid idea to sign up for the 5K.  I knew I wouldn't be able to run the whole thing when I signed up, but now I may be walking it all.

Hopefully my next update will find me back out jogging and walking pain-free, staying away from the people Avery is sure must be chasing me if I'm running.