Week 1, Day 1...intervals!

So, I completed my first training, which was 5 minutes of walking warm-up, 20 minutes of 60 second run/90 second walk intervals, and an additional 5 minute cool-down for a total of a 30 minute work-out. I'll be honest, it was H-A-R-D!!! While I have been walking everyday for a week and a half, peppered with an occasional jog when I was inspired, this training is legit. When reading the plan, in all my excitement, I kind of laughed off week one as easy. Well, I was definitely pushed to my limit. At one point I was actually thinking it was great to have my phone with me just in case I needed to call a co-worker to come peel me off the ground.

The Couch to 5K (C25K) app on my phone was great until it wasn't. It tried to skip over a couple of intervals, but I was able to time myself, in order to get it all in. Unfortunately, I lost some data, only capturing my first 10:32 of the interval training. In that time, though, I got in 1.12 miles, which is super impressive for me. And let me tell you, the robotic female voice coming from my phone, telling me when to walk and when to run, suddenly became angelic in tone when she said, "You're half way." I actually cheered for myself out loud - and I mean LOUD! I oblviously have no shame. When she suddenly told me to start my cool down, and I knew I had two intervals left, I just watched the clock on my phone to time myself - not as accurate, but it worked well enough for today. Hopefully it was just a weird glitch and the app works better tomorrow, because I will be doing this again...tomorrow.

The biggest challenge by far was that whenever the robot lady told me to run, I seemed to be headed up-hill! Well, that was enough to make my legs feel like complete mush under my heavier-by-the-second upper body. Alternatively, the biggest success by far was that I ran through the pain and exhaustion! I did it! Yes, I did a small victory dance before stretching, eating some apple slices, and pouring myself a nice, tall glass of water.

I then returned to my hobbit hole of a desk/office for an afternoon of email, phone calls, web content re-writes, and listserv messages...only a little sweatier and a lot more pumped!