Workout #11

18 minutes run/walk.

It's funny how intimidating 18 minutes seemed compared to 15 minutes. Once I actually got started of course it wasn't too hard to go just a little bit longer, but the additional mental hurdle to getting started in the first place was not as negligible as it should have been.

Workout #10

15 minutes run/walk easy.

It occurs to me that for full disclosure purposes I should state explicitly that I'm not really running the whole distance/time at this point in the game. Right now I have the treadmill going slowly enough that I can still do a fast walk at the same speed as I'm "running". So I'm alternating one minute of running with one minute of walking for the whole workout, in sort of a half-assed imitation of interval training.

I'm not entirely sure how I want to modify this as I get faster and start going longer distances. Even when I built up my endurance to do the half marathon a few years back, I was still painfully slow, and it would be nice if I could at least finish races in the middle of the pack as opposed to always being at the tail end. When I did the Charleston Challenge Mid-Winter Classic 10k as part of the half marathon prep, I got the Spirit and Drive Award for finishing dead last (ignore the guy listed with a slower pace than me — I don't think he finished). It was funny, and I'm genuinely proud of that award, but it would be nice to let somebody else get it for a change. :D

Workout #9

10 minutes run/walk easy.

Just making up my missed 10 minutes from Saturday. In celebration of yesterday, I have increased my treadmill speed by 0.1 mi/hr. And, no, the speed is not yet sufficiently non-embarrassing that I'm prepared to report what it actually is. :P

Workout #8

"Long" run, 1 mile.

I missed my little 10 minute easy run/walk yesterday, but I don't feel too bad about that, because today, for the first time since I've started doing this, I actually noticed something that felt like improvement. This one mile run was definitely easier than the one I did last Monday. My breathing was easier, my legs felt like they could go faster than I was going, even at the end, and I felt like I could have kept going quite a bit longer than prescribed. I didn't, in obedience to my resolution to do this slowly, but now I feel a little less intimidated by this coming week's projected increases in distance/time.

This training plan has a fairly constant slope to it, but what I'm thinking after today is that I ought to be alert to the possibility that my own improvement isn't necessarily going to take place at that same uniform rate. I know that plateaus and jumps are a common experience in any progression, and that the plateaus can be a significant source of frustration and even discouragement. But what I'm thinking after today is that it's important for me to listen to my body and accept the occasional period of apparent stasis or "rewind" — it doesn't mean that I'll stop getting better, it just means that the current "lesson" needs a little more time to sink in.

Next week: 2 miles.

Workout #7

15 minutes walk/run easy.

I'm rewinding a week on the NOVA plan because I missed a couple workouts in the middle of this week. (I kept collapsing on the couch at night and falling asleep before I did them.) So I figure it's better to just go back to the previous week and be on schedule rather than either skip workouts (thus probably advancing faster than I should) or kill myself trying to catch up. The key to this kind of thing (I think) is having patience with oneself, not beating oneself up for small slips in the schedule, and not letting those slips make the whole thing seem insurmountable.

As I've mentioned, the goal run for this particular stage of training is an 8k (a little under 5 miles) in mid-November, and following the NOVA plan exactly would get me there with plenty of time to spare. So as long as I stick with this, continue making reasonably steady progress, and don't insist on pushing so hard that I fall apart, the occasional glitch isn't the end of the world. And now I'm back on track.

Profiling and Xenophobia

I was having a discussion on a message board recently, and we got started talking about xenophobia. I had referred to that white supremacist asshole who murdered all those Sikhs as most likely being motivated to do so by racism and/or xenophobia, and some people said that I throw around the word "xenophobia" an awful lot without making it clear what it actually means. By way of example, I then mentioned Sam Harris's recent suggestion that "Muslim-looking" people should be profiled in airports as an example of xenophobia, and one of the other commenters asked me to clarify why this proposal was xenophobic. I ended up writing a fairly lengthy response, and I think it came out pretty well, so I decided to post an edited version of it here.

Workout #6

"Long" run, 1 mile.

I fell asleep on the couch last night instead of getting up and doing my run. Bad me. Fortunately, today was scheduled as a rest day, so I just reversed the two and did the workout today. I think maybe the three days in a row thing that's at the end of every week is a little bit much for my brain right now. I may need to make the "easy" days a little bit easier for a while in order to reduce the barrier. Makes me feel like a wuss, but for now it's more important to do the workouts than to do them hard.

I also bought some treadmill lubricant and put it between the belt and the footbed. I'm hoping that this will fix the weird problem that I've had with it where it sometimes slows down randomly in the middle of a workout and won't speed up for a couple minutes. It also seems like it heats up under my feet over time as I use it (I can feel it through the soles of the Fivefingers) and I've had a couple incidents where it overheated and shut down after long use (forty minutes or so, at a very slow speed). If anybody has experience dealing with this kind of problem with treadmills, please let me know.

Workout #5

10 minutes run/walk "easy". I'm almost embarrassed to call this one a workout, but it's on the NOVA calendar, so I did it and I'm counting it. And anyway, it's slightly less pitifully short when you count the warmup and cooldown walks. (I do 5 minutes of moderate-speed walking on each end for a short workout like this, or 10 minutes for a longer workout. I'm told this is particularly recommended for people with asthma, to reduce to chance of ending up wheezing when you stop.)

Tomorrow is my second "long" run, where long in this case means one whole mile. As someone who has actually done a gen-yew-ein half marathon (at approximately turtle speed) and is deeply aware of how pathetically unfit I was even then, it strikes me as almost laughable to call one mile a "long" run, but I have to remind myself that being a wuss about this and building up slowly and gently is actually part of the challenge I've signed on for here. If I push myself, that will ultimately fuck me up and I will not get to where I actually want to go. So when I keep it to one mile tomorrow, and when I alternate running and walking instead of letting the numbers on the display and the inevitable comparison to other runners I know and know of taunt me into sabotaging myself by going all out, that's a victory.

In any case, this is one week down, the rest of my life to go. See you tomorrow.

Workout #4

15 minutes run/walk.

It's been suggested to me that I should try Fitocracy for this stuff. I signed up for an account, but I'm thinking that it'll be a lot more useful if there are a significant number of other people I know who are using it. So, do any of y'all use it and want to link up over there? Also, any suggestions for how to use it effectively?

Workout #3

Third workout: 15 minutes run/walk, not "easy", but, as per my resolution to not kill myself doing this, also not crazily overboard.

I have no regrets at all about buying a treadmill, although the particular second-hand Craigslist one that we got could definitely use some improvement. But it's still so much better than not having one. I would've missed my workouts yesterday and today without it, because on both days I didn't manage to get off my butt to do it until midnight, by which point it's really creepy going for a run out in my neighborhood, and my school's gym is long closed. But with a treadmill, all I have to do is go downstairs. No more excuses. :)

Workout #2

I did my second workout. 15 minutes walk/run "easy" on the treadmill. Nothing exciting, but I'm going to try to post them here to keep myself honest. Boring, boring, boring, nothing to see here, move along folks.

Make me look ridiculous!

So, as I may have mentioned before, I'm participating in Philadelphia's Light the Night walk in October, which is a fundraiser for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I've never really done one of these charity fundraiser things before, and it's hard for me to ask people for money, so I admit to finding myself a bit at a loss when faced with a personal fundraising goal of $100 and a team goal of $5000. So here's what I'm going to do…

Running Reboot

I've decided to try to get back into running. There's an 8k race associated with the Philadelphia Marathon in November, so I'm going to start slow and shoot for that as a first milestone. If that goes well, I'll look for a half marathon and then hopefully eventually a full marathon to earn my wings, as well as doing other smaller races along the way to keep myself motivated. Running is so satisfying and rewarding when I really get going with it, even though I'm incredibly slow and am probably never going to be even remotely competitive at any level, and I really want it to be part of my life again.