Retraining myself

It rained again yesterday afternoon, so I didn't have to deal with many people on my run. It was hard to get myself out the door again. The rain was coming down pretty heavily and it was cold outside, so it was very tempting to just sit on the sofa and watch TV instead. I had read something on runnersworld.com last week though, that said if you are not wanting to do the run you planned, at least suit up and go do your warmup. Usually when you're done with your warmup you're already out there so you will probably just go ahead and do your full workout. Great tip, and it definitely worked. By the time I had finished my five minute walking warmup, I was already cold and wet and at the park, so I figured I might as well do what I came to do.

I started with the 30 second jog/2 minute walk interval, though there were times when I needed more than the 2 minutes to recover, so I took a little extra walking time. I had planned to stop by the pool just to check it out and make it less scary for my swim today, but I chickened out at the last minute, so I made myself do another loop around the park. This time, I tried to jog as long as I possibly could and then I walked as long as I needed to. On one of the jog segments, I actually got up to 56 seconds of jogging, so almost a minute! That was exciting. When I came back around to the pool again, I steeled myself and walked in there. I asked the front desk person how many lanes they usually have open and if they were usually full...just making conversation so I could get used to the place, but it would be useful to know if their lanes were always packed with swimmers and I wasn't going to be able to fit in. She said they usually have approximately 3 lanes and that they usually have at least one person in them, so that will be interesting. Maybe if I can get there soon enough after work I can snag my own lane.

My legs ACHED after that second loop...I used muscles on that one I didn't even know existed. On the way home, it felt like my leg muscles were rebelling. They were like, "dude! we are trained to sit on the couch...we don't know how to do this running shit!" :) I had to do a lot more stretching than usual, but it felt so good to stretch out those muscles that it was all well worth it.

Another issue I dealt with on this one was that I had some negative voices chiming in when I started my first jogging segment. Basically I was telling myself that I wasn't going fast enough or running hard enough. Luckily, I noticed this time that I was saying those things to myself and was able to stop and replace them with positive things. I am way too hard on myself sometimes. I mean, this was only the fourth time that I had gone out jogging and most other joggers out there aren't carrying around as much weight as I am. This is what jogging is to me right now...it doesn't have to be perfect form and I don't have to be all fast. The point is to get out there and do it.

Brian brought up a point about the Mt. Tabor 5k that I hadn't thought about before...Mt. Tabor park is apparently pretty hilly, so it might be a serious challenge compared to the route I've been working lately. The race route is posted online, so maybe I'll print that out and do a few test runs in the park before the actual race. That way, I'll know what to expect. I'm going to take some time today and make a training schedule. I've been working off of coolrunning.com's couch to 5k in 8 weeks program, but I'm not progressing as fast as their program does, so I need to plan out my own thing. The point of their schedule is to get you running an entire 5k in 8 weeks but I'm not planning to run the whole thing yet, just part of it.

For whatever reason, after my run yesterday I totally wanted to have red beans and rice for dinner. Of course we didn't have any of that, so I looked through what we did have and found a bag of red lentils. I looked on allrecipes.com and found this great recipe for red lentil curry (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Red-Lentil-Curry/Detail.aspx). I had never done anything at all with lentils before and, frankly, I don't cook much, so I was a little intimidated but I made it anyway. It turned out great! I didn't have any onion so I just chopped up some carrots, zucchini, red bell pepper, and apple and steam/sauteed it all together while the lentils were cooking. I ate it with some pita bread we had, since we didn't have any rice. It was really good with a little sour cream on top but T says you can also use gingered yogurt and that sounds like it would be really good too. We each brought some for our lunch today, so we'll see if it stands up to reheating. Either way, it's exciting to just pick a recipe and make it happen. I've never been very into cooking, but lately it has been kind of fun to see what I can do.

Swimming today. I'm a little anxious about the whole thing, but I'm also excited to get to go swimming. I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories to tell about it tomorrow :)