How I Ran a 5k, the prequel

As I mentioned in my last post, I literally had never run a mile before this year. In school, I only did as much running as was required of me, and even then I cheated the system to do even less than that. During my senior year of college, I made a noble effort to start running, after noticing all the people jogging through my neighborhood and how happy they were. To be honest, I have no idea if they were actually happy, but they were attractive so therefore must have been happy. I decided to take it slow, and was going to run for a block, then walk for a block, and so on.

This lasted exactly half a block. And that was the extent of my running in the year 2005.

Fast forward to last year, when I heard about a wonderful program called "Couch to 5k". The idea of the program was to, in the matter of eight weeks, take someone who couldn't run around the block (or halfway down it) and turn them into someone who could run an entire 5k race, or a little over 3 miles. It did this by starting you off slow, jog for 1 minute, then walk for 90 seconds. Repeat for 20 minutes.

The best part of this plan, at least for me, was there was an app for it. I had an iPod touch and saw that there was an app that would keep track of where you were in the program and that it would give you audio cues during the workout to let you know when to speed up and to slow down. Also, you can listen to your own audio while using the app, which was added incentive.

So I used that app and after about five weeks I got to Week 3 of the program. For some reason I can't remember, that was the end of that. I'm sure it was just my feet hurting a little bit and me being a baby, but whatever it was, my ambitions to become a super runner were over.

Then this year, I tried the program again, and succeeded. But that, my friends, as well as how I met your mother, is a story for another time.

P.S. Couch to 5k really is a wonderful thing. Check it out: Cool Running | The Couch to 5k Running Plan

The journey of 13.1 miles begins with one step.

Welcome to the beginning of my journey. Well, two journeys actually. One journey is this blog itself. I have intended to start a blog for well over a year and have nothing show for it. Other than this little paragraph, I'm not going to give much more of an introduction to this blog, since I feel it's writing the "perfect" introduction that has halted every attempt I have made at making a blog.

Anyway, the other journey I am embarking on is that of a half-marathon. As of last week, I have started a running plan that will hopefully allow me to endure the 13.1 miles of the Omaha Half-Marathon on September 25, 2011.

The crazy thing is that until only about three months ago, I had never run more than a mile straight in my life. In elementary school, when we had to do the mile run, I would simply run for the parts where the P.E. teacher could see us and walk the rest. I wasn't the only one who did it, and since some of us were "running" 15 minute miles, I'm pretty sure the teacher could catch on. In high school, I never had to do anything more than "run the straights, walk the curves" during gym class, and couldn't understand the people who actually chose to run the curves.

Now, here I am, running three to five days a week, with my shorter runs being 3 miles long. How I got there is a topic for another blog post. This post is mostly to publicly state my intentions, thus making it harder for me to back out of both blogging and running a half-marathon.