A Morning Run

courtesy of morguefile.com

I went for a run this morning. And when I say morning, I mean morning, as in 7am morning. If you know anything about me, you should know two things. My morning is somewhere between 8am and 9am and is defined by a warm breakfast followed by a hot tea. Not being outside 10 minutes after I've woken up. The other is that I don't run. "I hate running" has always been my motto. If you ever saw me running, you'd know something or someone must be chasing me. So why in the world would I purposely wake up early to go running before starting my day??

The answer is part of my new found love of exercising. See, I've never liked to sweat either. In fact, I hate sweating most of the time. If I'm at the beach, outside for a walk, or exercising, sweating is tolerable. But it's still not my favorite. So for me to love exercising, well this is just a brand new world. But part of the "new me" for 2012 is adopting a healthier lifestyle and we all know healthy and exercise go hand in hand. So I joined a gym and quickly became addicted, er, obsessed...um, dedicated to cardio. The first week or so felt like death, but now I can easily do an hour on the elliptical. So where does the running fit in? Well, part of being healthier is the mental and spiritual side of it, not just physical. I decided that I wanted to challenge myself. To do what I've always thought I couldn't do. And running fits right in. My sister has been asking me to run a 5K with her for years now and I've always shrugged her off as being crazy. You run for fun, just because you want to? Crazy, I say! But now that I feel the need to challenge myself, a 5K sounds doable. We are going to sign up to do the Tampa May Classic 5K on May 5th. That gives us almost 2 months to train and be completely ready. I've looked at some of the Couch25K and know that interval training is the way for me to go. So I'm taking the idea of the C25K, but modifying it to best fit my strength and endurance levels. I'm ready to spend the next 7 weeks training myself to be able to run 3.1 miles without dying. 

So back to this morning's run. I knew I wouldn't make it to the gym today, but I still wanted to get a workout in. Especially considering how many calories I have and will be consuming this weekend. So I set out a few minutes after 7am and ran 2.37 miles in 35 minutes. About a 14 minute mile. Now that may seem slow to some, but let me tell you, it's a huge improvement over the 0 miles I was running a few months ago.

I started writing this yesterday, but didn't get to finish and didn't want to publish it without clarifying that this morning run was on Saturday. I ran again this morning. I still hate it.