Y5K #16

Now that my crazy July is over, I was finally able to get out and run 3 whole times this past week:

• Monday: Decided it was now or never for pushing forward, and I took a tiny step up to running for 5.5 minutes each leg with the same 1 minute walking rest in between.  Went just over 3.1 miles in 35 minutes. Had some weird tingling in my left elbow at the end. So that was new. :)  Also, discovered that 5 kilometers = 3.107 miles. Here I was thinking it was 3.2 miles. As if that makes a huge difference. Don't know how I got the wrong number in my head.

• Wednesday: Did another 5.5/1 split and went just shy of 3.2 miles in 37 minutes. Which means I went faster on the way out than I did Monday, but a couple minutes slower coming back. Probably due to the fact that I went slightly downhill on the way out, plus down a short steeper section that I had to come back up on the way home. 5.5 minutes of jogging is feeling doable though. Does that mean I need to go to 6 next time? I don't know. And I don't know if I'll find time to jog on Friday or Saturday. Guess we'll see.  Oh, and the numbness in my arm didn't make a reappearance so that was nice.

• Saturday: What's that? Can it be? 3 runs in the SAME week? Crazy, I know. I don't know if I managed that once in the entire month of July.  Anyway, it felt good to be back out there today, and to have a Saturday with a little bit of flexibility in it after a few weekends of traveling.  And as if that wasn't enough, I even stepped up to 4 sets of 6 minutes jogging with a 1 minute rest in between.  AND I was feeling okay enough at the end of the last set of jogging that I decided to go an extra minute. That's right, I did 25 total minutes of running today, and only 10 total minutes of walking (counting warm-up and cool-down even).  Anyway, partly I attribute it to the fact that I took the same route as Monday's run where I go almost entirely uphill on the way out from my house and then coming back it's almost all downhill.  Daft Punk's live album ("Alive") kept me company, and there were even a few points where I was able to not think about the fact that I was running at all, and just let my body take care of it while I was thinking about other stuff. So that was nice, too.  Guess we'll see what my body has to say tomorrow about my pushing things this week. For now, I'm very pleased with my progress. Oh, and total distance was about the same as Monday, 3.25 miles, but in only 35 minutes.

On the whole, my best week of running yet. My knees have been a little more sore when I run, which is just to say sore at all, because they really haven't been much of a problem so far. I'm trying to make sure to ice them after I run, so hopefully that doesn't turn into a big problem.  Looking ahead at this week, I'm optimistic about my chances of getting 3 good runs again. Been toying with the idea of taking one run a week and just seeing how far I can run without stopping to walk, so that I can maybe get an idea of how close I am to being able to run a full 5K.