Week Two...

I showed up at 7:00 am the next day and my coach told me to try to concentrate on my breathing as I ran. We ran about 2 miles through Fuquay (by running I mean mostly walking between intervals). I tried to run 2/2 again, but I ended up walking most of the 2nd half, and at one point, I was in tears. It wasn't a good start to the week, that's for sure!

But, for some reason, my feet hadn't shown any signs of problems, and my knees felt good. I determined that I could keep going if I made sure I listened to my body and didn't push it too hard. I ran on Monday in my neighborhood, still at 2 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking. I seemed to do better if I made sure I warmed up by walking for 5 full minutes first, and I went one time around the loop. That night, just by chance, one of the owners of our gym did an in-service training on breathing. It made so much sense -- breathing with your diaphragm instead of with your chest! He showed us how to practice deep breathing from the core in a variety of positions, and it was like a lightbulb went off in my head.

Tuesday afternoon at the track was a different story. I practiced the breathing while I was warming up, and when I started running, I found that if I breathed down into my pelvis while I was running, that it relaxed me and I could focus better. Even though the task was to run 3 minutes and walk for 2 (3 or 4 times), the run was manageable and I ran the full four times PLUS 2 extra minutes. I decided then that, if my body would allow it, that I would push myself beyond Mindy's requirements each track workout just to see if I could catch up with some of the other 5K trainees.

I continued to run 3/2 the other two runs that week in my neighborhood. Mindy's homework wanted us to run 20 or 25 minutes, with us running as much as we could, but I felt like I just needed to stay with the 3/2 intervals at home until they weren't killing me.