As I mentioned last week, I have recently started jogging
again.
My first REAL attempts at jogging began two and a half years
ago, when I signed up for the CIBC Run for the Cure. This is a 5km run in downtown Toronto with
proceeds going to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. I thought this would be easy peasy – a lot of
people from work were doing it; most of whom I assumed were of average fitness
level, like me.
Well once they released us from the corrals, it was pretty
slow, with everyone trying to settle into a comfortable speed and not crash
into others running faster or slower.
Once we had settled, two of my co-workers decided to push this
comfortable jogging speed into more of a run.
Boy, was I not ready for that! As
the rain was pouring down, we were hopping up onto the sidewalks to get a clear
piece of pavement, jumping over puddles and dodging other runners in order to
be able to continue at this ever increasing pace. We had cleared the majority of the people
near us who were jogging at my previous comfortable speed and now were passing
others left right and centre. Then came
back the pain I had felt when I had attempted to jog/run in the past...cramps,
or as they are more appropriately known in the running world, side stitches. These darned awful pains in my lungs, causing
me to want to slow right down to a crawl and making me question why I woke up
so early on a Sunday morning, simply to be in so much pain. I felt defeated as my co-workers flew past
me, looking as if they had all the energy in the world. I slowly fought throw the side stitches,
breathing deeply through my mouth and slowly, SLOWLY began to pick up speed. As I passed the finish line, I messaged my
one co-worker, only to find out that she had just passed through a minute or
two before and the other one had dropped out around the 3 kilometer mark. Boy, did I feel relieved. Not only had I finished a 5km jog, the
majority of it alone, but I hadn’t been completely blown out of the water
either.
In hindsight, I probably should have trained for this. My idea of “training” had been 3 sets of 3km
jogs a week or two before the Run for the Cure.
Considering I had never hit 5km in a training run, I’m not sure how I
got the idea that I was in the least bit prepared for this. But in the end, I finished it! Then came home, dried off and quickly passed
out. I was exhausted!
Now we fast forward about two year and a bit to a few weeks
ago. Somehow, I got the idea into my
noggin that jogging would be a great quick workout, super convenient for this
time of year when work is hectic and unpredictable and I can’t always make it
to my 90 minute Bikram class when I’d like.
So one Sunday morning, well more like afternoon since I love to sleep
in, our pups, Kobe and Jadea, were whining for their morning walk. I decided I’d be the good mom and take them
out. Little did they know that not only
were they going to get some fresh air, but they would be my jogging buddies. I had heard about the Couch to 5K runningprogram before,
so I quickly opened my BlackBerry App World to see if there was some sort of
app I could download for motivation. A
few apps came up but I decided to stick to a free one for now, to see if I’d
actually stick with this whole jogging idea.
An app called “Couch 2 5K” was free for a two week period, which I
figured was a good length of time to decide whether I would continue to jog or
even need the app. The app itself is
pretty good. Simply plug in your
headphones, click start and it will tell you when to warm up, jog, walk and
cool down. The intervals of each depend
on where you are in the program and you can fast forward or repeat a day as
well.
Well that’s enough babbling for now – let’s get to jogging
and next time I’ll update you on my progress and whether I’m still feeling the
app and jogging!
