Brownies and Zucchini

You may or may not know that a few months ago I started the Couch to 5K running program.  This program is meant to really help people who want to start running, but don’t have any running experience.  Even though I consider myself an active person and played 3 different sports for most of my youth, I have never been a runner.   When the time came during practice to run laps, I cringed and angrily made my way through through the run, knowing that the fun part (practicing the sport) would be on the other side.

So WHY did I decide to start running when clearly it was not my preferred form of exercise? There are a couple of answers to that question.

1) After reading healthy living blogs, and making friends with many of the bloggers that write these blogs, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It is very hard to read a race recap and not be inspired to run, to race, to DO.  It didn’t matter if someone ran a 2 mile “fun run” , a Marathon, or an Iron(Wo)Man, reading those recaps inspired me to push myself, and made me WANT to push myself, knowing that it had more to give me than I was letting it give. (P.S. Click on the links of those races!  The fabulous bloggers in those posts are some of my biggest running inspirations!!)

2) Really, I kind of just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.  That I could still be as active as I once was.  I also kind of missed to competitive piece that teams sports gave me in high school.

I went back and forth with myself for at least a month before committing to the couch to 5K program.  I have kind of a history with injuries…..but not injuries that are serious, just over use and random injuries that have no real cause or definition besides that they hurt.  The worst kind of injuries. After talking and debating with a bunch of different people whether it would be good for me to do this or not.  Whether I would get injured or not. Whether I even still had the lung capacity to run even 30 seconds at a time.  I finally decided to give it a go.  That was in back in May.

The beginning was tough, but day after day that I pushed myself to run, it did get easier.  I tried really hard to make sure that I wasn’t pushing too hard and that I was icing and stretching after each and every run.  Then, about 3 weeks in, my knees seemed to only be getting worse with each run.  It got too painful.  I knew that if I had any chance at not seriously injuring myself I needed to stop and take some time off from running.   So I did.  And then I went to California for two weeks.

By the time I got back from California, I felt like maybe it was time to give it another try.  My knee was feeling better, and I knew that I had to at least try it or I would never know if I could.  Either my knee would feel much better running, or it would go back to being super painful and I would have to stop again.  I needed to try to know if my body could do it.  So, in July, I started back at the beginning of the Couch to 5K program.

Days came and went.  MILES of running was done.  I was running at a fairly even pace for minutes at a time without stopping. And then the inevitable happened again…..I started hurting.  It was my ankle this time. My ankles were sore for 2 or 3 runs before they got really bad.  It started out really just being soreness.  Soreness that I EXPECTED from my body since I was causing it new stress.  But then it continued a day or so after the run, and then it got worse…..they may even have been some bruising and swelling going on.  All I knew was that my left ankle hurt.  Bad.  I was not happy.  The first time that I had to stop running, I was honestly kind of relieved.  I felt like I knew that it was going to happen and was just waiting – plus I definitely used the time in CA to relax and not worry about running at all.  This time, it happened right before I was going to attend the Healthy Living Summit.  I know, most people don’t care if they can run on vacation, but I had plans.  There were friends that I was going to be with who inspire my running already and I knew that it would be a great chance to run WITH them and be even more inspired.  But since I was injured, I would no longer be running.  Of course my friends were super understanding and supportive and as much as they would have loved to run together as well, we were in agreement that it would be the best decision for me NOT to run.  So, again,on August 17, I stopped running.  Again. Frustrated and injured, I knew that I needed to really take it easy so that I COULD run in the near future.  I also knew that I NEEDED to get new running shoes before I ran again.  A long walk in the old shoes during HLS confirmed that they were a big part of the problem.

So finally, 3 weeks after I stopped, I felt like maybe I could run again.  BUT I needed to get new shoes first.  I asked around and it was a pretty unanimous decision that I should go to Movin’ Shoes and they would set me up with good running shoes for my feet.  So I did just that.  The  people at Movin’ Shoes were wonderful.  I tried on about 10 pairs of shoes, and finally ended up finding a pair that I liked.  They are the Nike Structure Triax 14…..in blue, of course.  They look like this:

So, yesterday my new shoes and I went on a run…..for the first time in almost a month.  Instead of starting right where I left of with the Couch to 5K program, I went back to the beginning of week 6.   That is only a week behind where I was, and I’m proud to say that I made it through the run!  My legs didn’t feel 100% awesome afterwards, but they were definitely not in the kind of pain they were before.  They just feel generally sore…..like I haven’t run in a while…..so  I suppose that is to be expected, since I HAVEN’T run in a while.

So, now I’m back at it. Hopefully.  You can follow me on Daily Mile to see how far I make it this try 🙂

Well.  That was a lot of words.  Now I’m going to go make some of these. I suggest you do the same.:)

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Filed under: Words Tagged: | c25k, injury, running, shoes