Guess what?
It’s a new challenge month!
We are back to a core challenge. This time we are working up to holding Boat Pose for 5 minutes!
In the download there are some modifications. Do what is best for your body, need to bend your knees? Put your hands back? All good. Just make sure to keep back straight and core engaged.
Want the PDF version? Get it here —>boatpose
Just. Keep. Running.
I have to keep telling my self that fairly often.
When I was younger I was a runner.
I ran for me. I ran because I enjoyed it. I ran to collect my thoughts.
I started running at the athletic club where we belonged. In high school my mom canceled that and I had to run outside on the street. Which I found I enjoyed more.
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I loved clipping on my walk-man, yes that says walk-man, and heading out of the house. There was so many directions I could run, to change-up the scene a bit. My mind would wonder and clear. When it got hard, I would push through and keep going, because I had to get back to the house somehow.
Eventually, it was harder to find the time. We lived where it wasn’t safe for me to run alone. We lived where it was too cold to run outside. Many reasons, well mostly excuses on why I stopped running.
For a while now I have wanted to start running again. I didn’t because I had a mental block. I knew I couldn’t just run like I used, I had to start out slowly, and run intervals. However, I just couldn’t figure out how to start.
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Sometime last October my cousin was talking about how she started this Couch to 5K program. Which I thought was just a name she thought of, cause she is funny like that.
Turns out it is an actual program. Someone sat down and thought about the best way to get people to run a 5K (about 3 miles) in nine weeks time. It is specifically designed for people who have not run in a long time, or have never been running. It is designed for a 30 minute workout, three times a week.
There are a lot of resources out there, some are free, some you pay for. I like this website because he has complied a whole list of resources for you to get started.
In October I joined a gym and I started running. I am too old for running in poor weather right now, so I run on a treadmill.
I downloaded this free app. There was some complications and then the holidays, so I didn’t quite keep on schedule. I still ran, but sometimes I repeated some of the days. I am now on track to be able to run a 5K in two weeks time.
I am not gonna lie. It has been hard. My lungs are not happy, my knees hurt and I need a new sports bra. I have to learn to breathe again.
My run on Monday night was the most difficult yet. I was just sooo tired, Baby Sid is teething, and both him and Ian woke me up a number of times the night before. It was the first time since I started that I had to sneak in a minute of walking during a running interval. Because I felt I was going to fall over.
But here I am now. I am a runner. I run. I run. I run. I am a runner….well almost.
Happy Running
So I have decided I am out of shape.
Not the ‘oh-my-god-I-am-so-fat’-so-you-pay-me-a-compliment-out-of-shape but the I-can’t-walk-up-a-flight-of-stairs-with-out-being-winded-out-of-shape.
And yes I know I just recently had a baby, five months ago. And that is not what I am talking about either, remember 9 months on, 9 months off.
I just am not as active as I once was and it is starting to show. I work on the sixth floor and I usually have to park on the second floor of a three floor parking garage, so this is ample opportunity to take the stairs instead of the elevator. Plus I have to go down to third floor, and back, twice a day for lactation time. Which means more stair time!
To make sure I am walking as much as I can during the day I have decided to make use of the Nike Fit app on my iPod Nano.
I took the stairs, six flights! Maybe that was over-kill on my first day, but I did it. I feel that I probably should have burned more than 13 calories! OK, so it took me a while to walk from my car to my desk, and to the break room and back to my desk. I was going a little slowly up those six flights of stairs.
HOLY COW were my legs burning at the top. Which confirms my theory, that I am out of shape.
So from now on, I vow to take the stairs when possible. I will also be keeping track of my steps, and hopefully it won’t take me almost 20 minutes to get to my desk in the morning. I will also be taking ‘walking breaks’ while at work.
As you, my readers, love to hear all about my life, I will be sharing this journey with you as well. Every single step of it.
Happy Walking
I Tri and Craft 