I MADE IT!!!

Two miles. Finally. After so long. It was slow, but I did it.

Journaling really seems to help. After yesterday's entry I got to thinking and analyzing a bit. I did lots of research. From the articles I read and the info on the net, I think I was pushing too hard. The way I felt Friday pretty much tipped me off. I feel great afterwards, but I don't think I should be struggling quite so much during the workout.

So, I decided to slow my pace down quite a bit. I found this marvelous training tool on runners world. You put in your fastest mile, what race you're training for, how long you want to train, and how hard you want to train. It is marvelous! What is most marvelous about it is that it told me to slow my pace by 4 minutes. This was news to me. Even on the very hard setting I should not have been running as hard as I was. I've just never trained for a race before, only for exercise. Today I found by going much slower, at the pace they recommended, I was able to meet my goal without any struggling at all. I could have run even further, but I held back to stick to the schedule. I mean I sweat, and it was hard work; but it was nothing like I had been experiencing. This is huge news to me and really helps to turn the light bulb on! This is how new runners can run 2 miles their first time out. Duh! Then another thing I happened upon this morning and yesterday was that you need to warm-up for one mile before doing your workout as well as afterwards for a cool down. This was huge news to me b/c I usually only spend 5 minutes warming-up. They say you can go further. Well, who would have thunk? This should prove challenging in it's own regards as I am already running slower than a snail. I can't imagine running slower than that for a whole mile! Maybe really fast walking would be okay until I speed up a bit.