Wait... I Like Running??

Believe me, no one is more surprised than me. I am by no means a runner, and let's just be honest with ourselves - I will never, ever run a marathon. However, strangely enough, lately I have been trying my hand at running, and I'm glad to report that I really like it, and I'm not half bad!

I love walking, so that's my go-to outdoor workout. However, I knew that I needed to up the ante, so I decided to incorporate multiple one minute jogging intervals into my walk. At first I must have had terrible form because my calves and hips hurt so much I could hardly walk the next day. So I started focusing more on good form and the pain went away.

I've been building up, and now I have a 50 minute workout that is working great for me. I walk briskly or do the elliptical for the first 15 minutes. Then I do 35 minutes of 5 minute intervals - 2 minutes walking, 3 minutes running. Some of you are probably laughing at me right now (and rightfuly so... it's silly to be proud of 3 minutes of running at a time), but if you add it all up, I'm running like 21 minutes! I'm not sprinting, but I don't think my pace is too shabby: 5.2 mph. We've been lucky in Houston to have cool weather with very low humidity, so I've been running outside quite a bit. Sometimes I get so into my Lady GaGa or Ke$ha that I forget to look at my watch and accidentally run 4 or 5 minute intervals! I'm finding that it's easier to run on the treadmill at the gym... there I can run 10 or 12 minutes without stopping at a slight incline.

The thing I love most about running, though, is that it's getting me results. I recently stopped doing boot camps because my beloved workout partner of two years went and got pregnant so she can't do boot camp anymore. I know... the nerve of her! :-) I think the boot camps were building up too much muscle and now I'm losing some muscle, but I'm kind of OK with that. I'll add back some strength soon, but I'm happy with my intense cardio for now. After I started doing my 50 minute running workout 3-5 days a week, I lost 8 pounds in the blink of an eye. I'm entering a 10 pound segment of the scale I thought I may never see again. To be fair, my foray into running coincided with an intensely stressful situation that caused me to eat very little for an entire week, so that probably helped. But I do think the running was the tipping point. That success really motivates me to keep running!

I'm not worried in the least about speed or distance. I just concentrate on not cheating on my intervals. I think I can do even more than I'm doing now, and I'm pretty excited about it. So who knew? I like running!!