Mind Games

I went out for my first run last night, and had a good time. It was tough, and I don't think you ever really realize how heavy the body is until you try to propel it that way, but I felt determined and proud of myself for even starting. I also felt enormously well prepared.
Some ingenious person on a runner's board mentioned that they created individual iPod playlists for each week of the C25K and adjusted the stop time of songs to correspond to the walk/run routine. So I did that, but managed to forget to turn off the 'shuffle' option, so I ran at some clips for 90 seconds, walked for 60, then ran for 60 and walked for 90. I think it evened out in the end though, and I even went for 30 minutes because I forgot to look at the time.

I waited until it got dark to run because of my long-standing horror of working out in front of other people, but it still wasn't late enough, apparently. Maybe it was just that it was the longest day of the year yesterday, but folks were out and about in the neighborhood between 9:30 and 10 p.m. which is HIGHLY unusual for my neighborhood. I live in a tree-lined, very upscale 1940's suburban brick neighborhood with a predominantly older population who are usually in bed by 10.

Anyway, it was a start. As I suspected, my left knee did hurt a bit, and oddly enough my left ankle as well. I am hoping to see a specialist about getting an orthotic to help my irregular leg length problem before I hurt myself. At this point I think I'd drop into a severe depression if I had to stop training. (As an aside, it feels witless for me to call what I did last night 'training'. Two year olds on toddle bikes could have passed me! But I am not worrying about that right now.)

I've heard a lot about how running is a mind game. People I respect and think of as being paragons of determination and strength talk about the double-bind of training not just the body, but the mind as well, and boy is that going to be the case for me. I had to psyche myself up to even begin this plan because I know myself and I know just what kind of emotional havoc I can wreck on my own psyche. So I have little Post-It notes that say things like "don't expect to see ANY change until you've been running for at least 10 weeks," and other lame things like that. I am the kind of person who can't balance her checkbook but will happily sit down with a flow chart of higher algebra to figure out the amount of protein I need, or how much weight I could lose if I continued to lose at the rate at which I started. It's like a giant word problem, and yet I do it happily and then crash into despair when the inevitable stall sets in.

So none of that for me with running.

At least I hope. *g*