Zen Labs C25K Couch to 5K Round 2 Week 1 Day 1

I've been seeing a lot of posts about running on my Facebook news feed, so I've been thinking about giving C25K another go. Yesterday, hubby was supposed to go for a walk with me since he's going to up his game as far as this whole Diabetes 2 thing goes. He's going to start walking with me more so he can get himself off his meds and get his sugar under control. he decided not to go with my though! UGH! So anyway, that left me with a decision to make. I could go for a walk alone or I could do something here, or I could just hang out on the couch and read. I decided that I was going to try my 10K app! It's the graduate program after C25K. You work yourself up to running a 10K. I checked the first day though and it was a 50 minute workout with 10 minute jogging intervals and I was pretty certain that I wasn't going to survive that. It's been many many months since I did any running. I decided to do C25K again instead. I didn't feel like walking to the track though, so I did it on the sidewalk. Last year, running on the sidewalk killed my shins so bad that I didn't do that more than a couple times, so I thought I would regret the decision, but I did it anyway.

I set out on my normal walking route and started up the app. The first day is a five minute warm up followed by 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking. You alternate between jogging and walking for 20 minutes and end with a 5 minute cool down. My cool down was longer because I didn't turn around at the halfway point. I didn't want to do less distance than my normal walking route. During the first running segment, I was on a hill! It's not really much of a hill at all, but it was still a hill since I was running! It didn't go that badly though. I was pretty surprised. When I got to the end of the 60 seconds, I wasn't dying! I actually felt like I could keep going. I didn't want to deviate from the app though so I went back to walking. There were a couple running segments where I actually felt like I really was running. There were a couple going down a slight incline which was nice.

By the time I was done, I was pretty tired and ready to be home. My breathing wasn't terrible, but I was coughing a little bit and the back of my throat felt a little funky. I didn't have any pain at all in my shins or calves though. I was pretty excited about that. Later that day, I read my blog post about  my first round of C25K. I was pretty happy after reading it! I have made so much progress in a year in terms of my strength. I may not be losing any weight lately, but I'm certainly getting stronger!

Polar M400 Screen Shots

I didn't have my Polar M400 when I started C25K last year! It's way more awesome than what I had last year! I haven't done this whole running thing since like August of 2015. I was surprised to see all the extra things on the app. The screen shot on the left has a bout twice the information it used to have. I think part of it is that they made some things always appear where before you would have to click on the thing to change it to another thing. Now you see it all at once. It also added a cadence count. I found that interesting. I love looking at the heart rate grid on this. I'm supposed to be doing interval training if I'm doing this whole Wild Movement. I talk about it, but then I don't really follow through with it. I haven't had much focus lately on working out. I can blame my hubby since I don't want to start a Beachbody program and then not be available to go for walks with him in the morning, but really I just use that as an excuse not to start a full on program. I hope I stick with this running thing so I've got something forcing me to workout on a regular basis!