Something I haven’t mentioned in the blog previously is that at the end of November, I had started running again. I had considered running for a while before, because I knew I needed to do some kind of cardio, but nothing really stuck with me. While on the elliptical in the gym, I’d be jealous of the people running on the treadmill, so I thought I might consider running again, something I haven’t done in 20 years since high school.
Then I was walking around downtown with Maya, and happened across a running store. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I went back and went in, and came back out with new running shoes. So at that point, I was kind of committed.
I had seen a training program mentioned several times in the past called Couch to 5k, a 9 week (3 days a week) program intended to get you to be able to run for half an hour without stopping. The premise is you start off alternating walking and running. The first week, you run for 60 seconds, then walk for 90 seconds, and repeat for 20 minutes. Subsequent weeks shift the balance so eventually it’s all running. It took me a few extra weeks due to sometimes not being able to fit in 3 runs a week, but by the end I was able to do the full 30 minutes of running. After that, I was able to run for 30 minutes, 3 times a week, and then switched over to running 5km 3 times a week.
Naturally, given the name of the program and the progress I’d made, I thought I’d look around for my first official 5k to participate in. And I found one. Which I ran today.
The Matzohball 5k Run takes place at Centennial Park in Ellicott City. I convinced my brother-in-law to join me, which wasn’t too hard as he had started running for fitness a few months before me (which I didn’t know about when I decided to start). The race took place this morning, and I finished in a respectable 30 minutes and 50 seconds. I had been hoping to complete it in under 30 minutes, but I’m not going to complain.
I suppose my next step is to make sure I keep running, now that I don’t have a goal in my sights. Maybe I should sign up for another one….
Race results can be found at http://charmcityrun.com/content/results/results_matzohball_13.htm for anyone who wants to see the full results (I finished 54th overall in the men’s category out of 92 men, and 14th in my age group). And there I am after finishing the race:
TimBlog 