I ran 20 minutes in a row and it felt fabulous!

I hit my short term running goal this morning and I have to say, this is the first time in a really long time that I have felt myself amazed at my own ability! Back in the early summer when I started running in 2 minute intervals (very easy pace), I could hardly make it the 2 minutes. I kept looking at my watch, wishing it was over, and the 1 minute of walking I did between each 2 minutes of running never seemed long enough. But last week in her comment on the “Fitness ‘Goals’” post, Kimberley recommended the Blue Fin “ease into 5K” app.  I didn’t download the app but I went to the blue fin page and printed off the plan. Since I’ve been building slowly through the summer, I jumped in at week 5.  So when I got to week 6 this week, it seemed like a huge jump to the 9 minutes running-3 minutes walking-9 minutes running (with 5 minutes of brisk walking at either end) that I was supposed to do on Wednesday. But I did it.  Then today, it seemed even more outrageous that the assignment was to do a 5-minute warm-up walk, TWENTY minutes of running, and a 5-minute cool-down walk.  But I figured that the designers of the program knew what they were doing and that if they said so, then I could do it.  And so I set out.  About ten minutes into the running, it started to rain, and then it started to pour. And you know what? It didn’t matter. My steps felt light. My breathing felt even.  It was a cool morning, but by no means cold, and the rain refreshed me at the halfway point. When I have longer times to put in (okay, for me, 20 minutes is super-long), I try not to look at my stopwatch timer too much. It amazed me that by the time I looked at it the first time I was already 9 minutes and 30 seconds into it.  Anyway, long story short, I finished the run, even sprinted for about 30 seconds in the last minute.  I love this feeling of being amazed by my own ability. It may sound like a platitude to say that achieving fitness goals is empowering, and I do believe on the other side of it that it’s easy to tip the balance over to goal-setting as oppressive, but today I experienced that sense of “I CAN DO THIS” and I felt strong and capable.  Next goal will be a distance goal: 5K. Wish me luck! And thanks, Kimberley. Great recommendation.