So. Hey. Do you realize that tomorrow is the first day of the first week of the running program we’re supposedly doing? I feel partly excited (something new! maybe slimming and energizing!), and partly heavy with dread (maybe unpleasant and exhausting! maybe yet another failure in the quest for health and fitness!).
The shopping part is fun, though. I have some nearly new all-purpose exercise shoes from the last time I kidded myself that I was going to exercise and I’m going to start off with those–but then if I do this for “awhile” (two weeks? three? a month?) I’ll buy some running shoes. But Rob and William had only slip-on shoes, so they needed something they could run in, and they need that for the new school year anyway. Today we went to Target (*choir of angels sound effect*) and I found a pair for Rob at 50% off and a pair for William at 75% off. “Woo,” and also: “hoo.”
Also, we bought a pedometer. We don’t NEED one, but….well, it’s a fun toy. And Rob learned that “10,000 Steps A Day” thing at school, so he is wildly enthusiastic about it and asked if he could have his own pedometer as a Christmas present, and then William asked if he could have one for Christmas too. That is a pitiful request. If this one seems good (it was $6-something, and maybe it’ll be craptastic and we’ll need one that costs a little more than that), I’m going to buy one for each of them.
I can already tell that this particular pedometer is not going to work for finding out how many steps I walk in a typical day back and forth between the recliner and the brownies: at around 200 steps I sat down for awhile, and when I got up it was over 300. I thought it was an anomaly, but then I went down to cycle the laundry, and when I looked again afterward it was over 500. Hmm.
Yes – I’ve printed off the Couch to 5K stuff. But really doing it? Hmmmm….
You know what my hubs said about virtual running.
He was probably closer to the reality of the situation that even he knew.
I’ll give it a shot tomorrow though, just so I can say I did ONE day. :-)
Here’s my 2 cents. I did C25K about two years ago. Its a great program. Its slow going enough that you really can get to 5K in the time they allot. I did it entirely on a treadmill so I didn’t have to run in the snow (I started in the winter). Now, the caveat…its a slippery slope (if you will). I had to take a break for a little while when I strained my knee (My sister is a personal trainer and her advice was to stop running until the pain went away and then start again. If the pain returned, it would mean it was running related. If it didn’t, then I was in the clear.). As proud as I was of myself for getting through the program, once I stopped I could never get back to it. It was so disheartening to try to do what I had previously achieved and struggle so badly. I ended up giving it up.
One ‘bad’ statistic and one helpful hint — it takes twice as much time to recover from a break of any amount (you stop running for one week, it takes two weeks of running to return to your previous level) and, when you start C25K, start a log of total miles or kilometers you run. Its impressive when you start getting into the high (total) numbers. I was pretty close to 100 miles when I gave it up.
I wish you luck. It really does work but you have to stick with it.
Good luck. I’ll be right here waiting when you’re ready to start training for the “couch to freezer for more ice cream” k.
I’ve done the 10 000 steps thing and found it really motivating. My pedometer was a cheapy too, and I found that I had to open the cover when I was in the car or on the train to stop it from counting slight movements. I also figured that as long as I was increasing my step count overall, it didn’t matter if it was completely accurate or not.
Yeah, those pedometers (especially the cheapies) can be inaccurate, because they really count “movements of the hip and surrounding area” and not STEPS, persay. So if you are fidgety, it will count steps even if you are not stepping.
Here at Health & Fitness Related Workplace, we use Accusplit Digiwalker Pedometers, which are $20ish dollars, but pretty accurate:
http://www.pedometersusa.com/digi.html