Well, since I let the secret out last week, I fig­ured that I should con­tinue to update any­one who is inter­ested on how my run­ning is going.  Jason ran a 10K race on Sat­ur­day, and I took the boys to find him on the course and wave to him, and then we met him at the fin­ish line.  He did so well!  I was so proud of him.    (Because my hus­band rocks!)  In addi­tion to feel­ing proud, though, I also felt moti­vated.  If he is already run­ning 10K races in under an hour, I need to get myself in gear and get work­ing on my training.

Between my post last week and his great time in the race, I had the extra moti­va­tion I needed last night to com­plete my 3rd work­out of the week.  Gen­er­ally, I run Mon­day, Wednes­day, and Fri­day or Sat­ur­day depend­ing on our week­end sched­ule.  Monday’s run went pretty well.  I ran about 1.5 miles, and then I took a short walk­ing break before I fin­ished the last mile.  Wednes­day was TERRIBLE!  I’m not sure what hap­pened.  I felt tired almost as soon as I started run­ning, and I only made it to about 1.75 miles before I ended up walk­ing the rest.  Ugh, it was dis­ap­point­ing and frus­trat­ing.  Then, on Sat­ur­day, we went to my sister-in-law and brother-in-law’s house for my niece’s fourth birth­day.  We got home late, and I had a greasy piece of yummy pizza for sup­per fol­lowed up by some birth­day cake and ice cream.  I was pretty sure that Saturday’s run was going to mir­ror the one I’d had on Wednes­day, but I decided to give it a try (as spurred on by the 2 pre­vi­ously men­tioned moti­va­tors!).  I ran the first mile and a half at my usual pace of 4.2 miles per hour.  Then, since I was feel­ing good, I decided to run the next half mile at 4.5.  I went back down to 4.2 for .75 miles, and then I did the last .25 miles at 4.5.  I was really happy about that run.  I felt good while I was doing it.  I ran the entire dis­tance.  I increased my speed a lit­tle, and I made my goal!

After that run, I decided that I needed to get seri­ous about mak­ing a plan.  Jason had used the Hal Hig­don 10K run­ning plan for his race yes­ter­day.  He felt like it pre­pared him well, and he was quite sat­is­fied with it.  I decided to (again) fol­low his lead, and start­ing a week from tomor­row, I’m going to start that plan, too.  I’m a lit­tle ner­vous about it, but I’m hop­ing that things will progress grad­u­ally from here on out.

Since my other post, I’ve had a few peo­ple visit with me about running.

“Doesn’t it make your feet hurt?”  Sur­pris­ingly, no.  In the begin­ning, I had hoped it would so I would have an excuse to quit.

“I’ve tried run­ning, but I just don’t enjoy it.”  I started run­ning in June.  I def­i­nitely did not enjoy it in the begin­ning.  I’m not quite sure I would say that I enjoy it now either, but I can say that it does feel good.  It makes me feel strong and, I know it’s good for me.

I’m not say­ing that every­one should run or that I’m for sure going to be able to run the half marathon in May, but I do think that there’s some­thing to be said for mak­ing a goal and stick­ing with it even if it is *very* much out­side your com­fort zone.  That’s essen­tially my goal.  I think the 13.1 miles are secondary.