I Am My Own Jillian

That 25 minutes on the treadmill is pure torture.  I wonder if people love running while they are actually doing it.  I love it when it is over, the sense of accomplishment.  I have to PUSH hard to get through it.  I am my very own Jillian Michaels yelling at myself to keep going.  I have a nonstop commentary in my head the whole time.   I wish I could zone out, but I am thinking of quitting every moment, so I persist with the aid of self-talk.

"You want to quit?  Seriously?"  What hurts?  Nothing??????  Keep going then!"
"You are half-way done.  You still want to quit?  How do you want to feel when this is done?  Defeated or like you won?"
"You can do it.  You are physically able to do it.  Break the mental barriers damn it! It is all in the mind!"
"You want to stop just because it is hard?  Yes, it is hard, so what?"
"If you can do this, run a 5K, do what you thought impossible, then you can do anything.  So DO IT!  Prove it to yourself!"
"Three more minutes.  You can do anything for three minutes! Just one more minute!  One more! Go!"

The running isn't mainly about weight loss for me.  It is a part of it, yes, but I could do any exercise.  The running is about breaking down barriers, knocking down walls, pushing past what I think I can do, achieving a goal.  It is so much more than running.  As I encouraged myself today, it occurred to me that I am my own motivator--my own Jillian Michaels.

PUSH!!!!

"Why choose failure when success is an option?" Jillian Michaels

I Am Doing It!

I ran the full, complete, total, entire 25 minutes of the run!  That's right, Baby!  All. Of. It.  It felt awesome.  I ran 2.10 miles, the farthest I have ran straight in my entire life.  Well, not really the farthest since I was running on a never-ending continuous rotating belt and stayed in the same place through the beginning, middle, and end.  I was home alone when I did it, which is good thing because the F-bomb accompanied by other words came out of my mouth when I was done.  When I was done, I proclaimed to the world (AKA Facebook) that I completed week 6, day 3 of the C25K and was signing up for my first 5K race.  I received a lot of encouragement and an offer to go for a pre-race run and run the actual race with a mom friend of mine.

 Definition of "mom friend":  The mother of one of my children's friends whom I am aquainted with through school/sporting/scouting activities.

In closing, I would like to turn off the mom mode and once again say, "F@#! Yeah!  I did it!"  I hope the words my mouth forms when I finish the actual race are classier, but I make no promises.

Success Even In "Failure"

I said I would officially sign up for the 5K race if I successfully completed my first 20 minute run on Friday, my third day of week five of the C25K program.  Well.....I didn't sign up.  YET.  I considered not running at all on Friday because of the wind and I didn't think I could complete 20 minutes straight on the dreadmill.  In fact, I had already decided I was not going to run that day.  And then I gave myself a good shaking and changed my mind.  I gathered up the troops and we walked up to the track.  The wind on the second half of the laps made me feel as though I were pushing against a truck-in slow motion.  My two oldest sons and I made it through one straight mile, 12 minutes of running.  After the third lap, I told my oldest son to not let me quit until I reached a mile.  Somewhere along the line I had a moment of weakness and said "I suck"  To which my middle son replied, "No you don't, Mom!  Come on!  You have been doing this for seven weeks.  You are doing good!"  (He's wrong on the number, but I didn't correct him; seven sounded good at the moment.)  I finished the first full mile that I have ran since four years ago when I last tried the C25K program, and I felt amazing, proud, happy even though I didn't do the full 20 minutes.  We walked 1/4 mile, then ran another 1/4 mile before walking home.  I felt like I could have ran the full amount if the wind wasn't so mean.  I never broke through the one mile mark the last go round, but I will this time.  So, Thursday is my new sign up day for the race after I complete a full 20 to 25 mintues of running. I am considering signing my oldest son up to run along side me.  I think he would love it.  Looking forward to posting Thursday about my success!

For Real, I Mean It!

I squeezed the first two weeks of the C25K program into one week so that I would have exactly enough time to train for the very first (and only) 5K that I ever watched.  It was four years ago that I went to keep my sister company while her husband ran the race.  It was that day that my sister and I decided the next time we would run too.  The next winter I got through 4 or 5 weeks of the C25K program, but it was cold and I didn't have a treadmill, and when I started back up again in the spring, I hurt my knee and there sat another thing unchecked on my mental bucket list. 

I finished week 4 of C25K, and O-M-G was it hard, but I made it through.  I have a running (no pun intended) dialog in my head.....it goes like this, "You can do this, Meem!  If you can do this, you can do anything!  You can do anything for just five more minutes, four more minutes, three more minutes.....You want to quit cause it is hard?  Are you kidding me?  Seriously?  Keep going!  What hurts?  Nothing?  So why stop?  GO!"  Then I congratulate myself for not dying at the end.

I really do feel like if I can run three miles, if I can accomplish this one dream, that I can find a way to win this race called life.  When I make it through my first 20 straight minutes of running in just three more sessions, I will officially sign up for the race this weekend.  I can do this!

A few side notes:

1. I have lost 11-1/2 pounds since January 1, and I feel so much better.
2. After just 12 sessions of C25K, I have rediscovered that I actually have muscles.  My calves are firm    and show muscle definition!  Just a month ago, I could wobble them to and fro!
3. I went to look at a house to rent.  It was a dump, literally, as in the toilet wouldn't flush.  But the point is, I stepped out of my box, past the just browsing on the Internet stage, called someone, and met them to look at the house.