Talking to the dog...sorta

I feel like that little girl on that old LDS commercial where she tries to show a picture she made to her mom and her dad. No one will take the time to listen to her. So she shows her picture to the dog. I wanted to talk to my mom this morning. She was sick. I wanted to talk to another friend of mine this morning about running. We didn't have time for that in the conversation. So here I am talking to my blog.

I started running in the middle of May. I ran 6 days a week on my mission for exercise. I learned to like it. I came home and planned to keep running. However, Utah has a much higher altitude than New York, so I quit running quickly due to the fact that it was harder. I was not up for the challenge at that point. Fast forward to a year later. I've been wanting to do something for exercise. I liked running. I just needed a motivation. So I went and bought some running shoes. That got me excited. Most of my running shoes have been hand-me-downs so I was thrilled that these were MY shoes. Bran new. I had a pair of nikes in jr high and a pair of sauconys in high school but yeah. Anyway.

So then I got this idea that I would train for a 5k. On the mission I decided I wanted to do a bike race. When I came home from my mission, my friend Kristina was training for a triathalon. I have this tendency for always wanting to do what Kristina does (we were locker partners a lot in school, I followed her to Weber, lived in the same apartment complex as her, went on a mission just like she did) so here I am thinking, oh a triathalon seems cool, I want to train for that some time. I also have had an admiration for my aunt, who at the age of about 40, ran a marathon. That has been in the back of my mind as well. So here I am training for my 5k in July. Its not a very long race and one wouldnt think a lot of training is necessary for that short of a race. But for me, its a goal. And that goal has motivated me to push myself a little. There is no way I'd just go out and run longer than 5 minutes if I didnt have a goal to work toward.

I run on the streets of Provo. I dont like running on a track or treadmill because I dunno, it just seems too fake. Predictable? But one thing I dont like about running on the streets (aside from the occasional air pollution) is that its harder to track how fast I am running. I am figuring out how to do that now, but it has taken me a few weeks. When I first started running, I didnt care about speed--just distance. But now I am concerned with both. Today I calculated I am running roughly 5 mph. I'd like to be running around 6 mph. However, some of my daily runs include hills, so there is the potential that I might be a little faster if I wasnt running up hills part of the time.

The first week I started running, day one included a .5 mile jog. Day two was like .75 miles. Haha here I am a little over a month later and my "normal run" is 2.4 miles and this Saturday, my long run will be 3 miles. After the 5k, I'd like to be able to continue to slowly increase my distance. I'd like to be able to go do a 10 mile run and have it be a fairly decent workout but nothing that kills me (psychologically, physically, aerobically). And maybe if I continue to increase my distance in little increments, I could do a half marathon next summer. Or even a full marathon? Wow thats crazy to think.

So today I ran 2.4 miles in the morning. I feel so good throughout the day. I noticed when I was running shorter distances, I wouldnt get that same good feeling. My heart feels happy. Thats a good way to describe it. I dont know why I have to run longer than the standard 20 minutes to get that feeling. I think this is the feeling people are supposed to get after 20 minutes of exercise to get that cardio workout. But for me, it takes just a little longer. But it feels great.