Zen Labs Couch to 5K C25K Week 6 Day 2

Week 6 Day 2

I can't believe that there are only two weeks left to Couch to 5K! I also can't believe that I'm sticking with this running thing! I've never thought running would be enjoyable.. I'm not sure if I actually enjoy running though. LOL. I think I enjoy knowing that I can run. I'm wondering if that's why so many previously overweight people take up running. It's pretty awesome knowing that I can run a mile. It's not a fast mile, but I can run a mile. At one point, walking a mile would have made my hip, my calves and my shins sore, but now I can run a mile. My shins and calves hurt a little while I'm doing it, but I don't have any negative effects the following day. 

I discovered on Monday that they had locked up the front gate of the track, but last night I found out that they have the back gate open. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use the back gate though. Hubby was going to come out with me this morning and we were going to check out the back gate, but he didn't have enough motivation to get out of bed, so I went out alone. I decided to skip the track though. It felt really good running on the street on Monday. My shins hurt more, but it was nice to have a difference in scenery. Going around and around the track gets a bit old after awhile. 

When I drive downtown, the road seems flat. When I walk downtown, it still seems pretty flat. However, it doesn't seem so flat when I run! I made decent time on the way out. I kept it mainly in the 13 minute mile pace. I went a little slower at times, but I never went over a 14ish minute mile pace. Once I turned around and started heading for home, I had some serious issues maintaining my pace. I kept naturally falling into a 15ish minute mile pace. I nearly hit 16 minute mile pace at one point! It's seriously like a 1% decline going out and incline coming back, but that little bit was enough to just totally throw me off my pace. I may have to rethink this running downtown thing. There are plenty of different routes I can take from the house, but this route has the most light and at 4:00 AM, I need all the light I can get.

Today's run was a 5 minute warmup, a 10 minute run, a 3 minute walk, a 10 minute run and a 5 minute cooldown. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my results. I that second 10 minute run was a bit of a challenge for me due to the slight incline, but I got through it. I didn't let the little voice in my head tell me to stop. I'm also getting better about picking my head up when I run. I'm not sure why I naturally tip my head down, but I'm going to break myself of that habit! 

Polar M400

Here's the screen shot from the Polar app. I think something went wonky. Those sudden dips in my heart rate in that first section and then again in the second run are just weird. My heart rate didn't all of a sudden drop by like 60 bpm. I must have had the monitor in a bad spot or something. It looks like it also disconnected from my for a little bit at the end of the second run. I wasn't wearing that stinking bra that I thought was causing the problem though. I'm not sure what's up. I'll have to experiment a little bit with it.