Week 5, Day 1 - Restless nights and early mornings

The first words I uttered in my head this morning were, "No Excuses."  I had many for not wanting to get out of bed:  up many times last night with a distraught toddler who has 5 new teeth arriving all at once; a stuffy nose and itchy throat from the brutal allergy season; still feeling salted about the Celtics loss last night.  But alas, I dragged myself, bleary eyed and bitter, out of bed and dressed myself.  My blood was slow to start moving.  I walked for several minutes before the yawning subsided and I felt at all ready to fire up some Chubby Jones and begin the power walking.  Once I did though, it all started to click into place.  I always stop mid walk, be it at the beginning  or during the so-called recovery walks, to stretch my legs, calves, and lower back a little more.  It amounts to about 30 seconds, but it makes all the difference to me.  I have yet to experience any shin splints (which I always have in the past when I run) or cramping in my legs, so I stick with it religiously. 

Once I started running, it felt really good.  I found today's intervals to be much easier to finish than last week's.  I'm not sure I am quite hitting the total distances the program calls for, but I think I am pretty close.  I discovered a website that allows you to enter your running routes and then it calculate the exact distance.  I was going to check out my total mileage this morning, but the site is down until tomorrow.  If you're interested, the address is www.gmap-pedometer.com.  At any rate, it felt good and I think I am going to run W5D1 once more with the goal of hitting the distance mark.  The cool thing about today's run was that for the first time since I started this program, I really did feel that I could be running 5K.  I mean, up to now, that always felt so far away.  And while I have been positive about this C25K thing, it has still been hard for me to even imagine myself running for 20 or 25 or 30 minutes without stopping.  Even last night, thinking about day 3 of this week, I felt nothing but dread, but now, I know that while it may be hard, I will be able to do it.  It's like the more I say it, the more real it actually becomes.  My hard work, my commitment, my mindset, and the support of friends, family and fellow C25Kers - it all adds up to the wonderful truth that I know deep down:  I CAN DO IT!!!