Run Mama, Run!

My entire life I've been the chubby girl. Two pregnancies have just added to my constant battle with my belly. Somewhere before my first child was born though my husband taught me how to exercise. He got me into weight training and that led to some fairly consistent cardio...mainly walking. Well two kids later my work out just is no longer cutting it. I contemplated what to do. Should I walk faster, at a higher incline, longer? At a certain point walking too fast just becomes bumpy, the incline gets so steep I almost fall off, and I'm already devoting as much time as I can in the morning to working out. It hit me though...I could run. Except I have this little problem with running. I'm just not the kind of person who is made for running. My legs are short and compact, my hips really square, my gait off, and my upper body much too jiggly. Many times before I've tried different programs to teach you to run. I even recently printed this little baby off with the hope of things to come but like most of my early running attempts it fell by the way side. This month though I knew I needed to do something different for all the above mentioned reasons. I made a deal with myself. The first week I'd run two minutes and then walk three. It was torture. I would grunt and sweat, huff and puff. Truly there was nothing enjoyable about the whole experience. The second week I'd run for five minutes and walk for five. Once again I found myself struggling along. The countdown to when I could start walking was excruciating and by my last five minutes I often found myself grabbing the handle bars of the treadmill. Week three I started putting my five minutes together. Monday I ran 7.5, then walked five, and then ran another 7.5. Then I worked up to 12 minutes running and by the end of the week I had run my 15 minutes all together and then finished up with a 15 minute brisk walk. Originally that was all I had intended. I figured running 15 minutes would add that extra lift I needed to keep my heart running fine. This Monday I did the same thing. Last night though something happened. My running shoes/the shoes I wear almost everyday were trashed. The heals were torn up, the tread worn down, and the toes wearing out. Last night after studying my gait, analyzing my run, and talking with my sister and brother in-law who are both avid runners I bought my first pair of official running shoes that I intend to be only running shoes.

With this purchase something inside me changed. Oh I still curse my overactive sweet glands and my waddling gait and as for the first five minutes of my run well they are still the worst and I have to tell myself that when they are done if I still feel as horrible as I feel in that second I can just walk, but with this purchase I think I finally found my runners high. Today when my five minutes were up I just kept running and then when I hit my fifteen minutes I figured hey why not run to twenty, and then when I hit my twenty I figured why not do twenty-five. At twenty-five minutes I had to leave to come home to get the kids ready but I felt like I could have kept going. With this purchase I told myself, "You know girl you might be a waddler but your a running waddler now." The real runners high was walking in my door and saying to my husband, "Hey I ran for 25 minutes today." It was seeing my friend at the library and saying, "Hey I run 2 1/3 miles today." It is writing this blog and saying to the world, "Hey world I may be slow but this mama is running now!" To all you people out there who run already, Angi, Brent, Jason, Bridget, Bethany, Miriam etc...hey guys I finally get it. To those of you who want to try, they aren't lying when they say it will get better. Start slow. It's easiest to use a treadmill to mark out your times but you could managed with a watch. Wear some comfortable shoes and just keep in mind while it may be miserable at first eventually it gets a little more tolerable :) Also keep in mind this program off cool runnings really is quite good even though I modified it a bit.