Run Eight: Life Lesson, Important-type!

No personal best today -- but it's a 28 minute
planned run rather than 30 or 31.

Learning to run giving me many new insights.

Today's big Life Lesson is that I apparently have always underestimated what I'm capable of. I also apparently have no clue at how fast my body can *improve* when I put demands on it.

I keep thinking I can't do things. But when I try them, I can. 

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd need two extra weeks at the Week 1 level because running 60 seconds was kicking my ass. A few days later, I ran all of the intervals. Despite my not having run voluntarily since childhood, I only needed one extra day. 

Last week, I was positive I was overdoing it at the Week 2 level and thought about taking a step back to Week 1 for a few days. That was the day before I went out and ran all of the intervals at Week 2. 

Last Wednesday, after completing Week 2, I thought there was no way I could do a Week 3 run -- which involves two three-minute running intervals. I'd pretty much decided that I was going to do a second week at the Week 2 level just to get myself ready. 

I changed my mind on that this morning and set out for my first Week 3 run -- my goal was to run all of one 3-minute interval and at least 90 seconds of all of the others, which would have been 7.5 minutes of running. (The Week 3 program is "two repeats of 90 seconds of running, 90 seconds of walking, three minutes of running, three minutes of walking". That adds up to 9 minutes of running -- which is how many I did last Wednesday when I ran six 90-second intervals.)

I actually did better than my goal -- but in a weird way. I missed the first cue to stop running and ran right through that walk break which made for a 3 minute run. I then spent the rest of the run kind of making it up as I went along and mostly ignoring the voice from the app -- I wound out running four more 90-second intervals for a total of 9 minutes of running, better than my goal. 

I'm feeling excited about trying other new things now -- apparently if I ask my body to do stuff I don't think I can do, it gets there quickly. 

Why didn't anyone ever tell me this? 

I'm now getting psyched to go to the climbing-wall gym in town -- I've been wanting to do that for ages. The absolute baby-beginner wall is calling my name. 

In related news: I've lost almost 12 pounds since mid-January when I started eating better and walking (before I started running). That's pretty freaking cool as well. 

Next run is scheduled for Monday. Goals for the run: Run at least 9 minutes, run all of at least one 3 minute interval, and follow the instructions from the app. (If I can do both of the three-minute intervals, I'll be overjoyed.)