3 posts tagged “running”
Although I have been running three to four times a week for the last two months, I had never run in a timed race prior to last weekend. For my first race, I signed up for a 5K just to see how things would go, but the results were posted tonight and I was so excited to see that I ended up placing 7th for women in my age group and 21st out of 259 women... wooooo!! My average pace was 9.35 minutes per mile, or about 6.4 mph.
I thought running with a huge group of people was a lot of fun, definitely a lot more exciting than running solo in a park full of territorial geese and navigating around goose poop, which is how I normally roll.
In the photo below, on the left you'll see the obligatory Runner Crosses Finish Line photo, and on the right you'll see the many hands attacking me shortly after I finished as evidence of how efficiently the race was coordinated:
For the past month, I have been diligently running every other day. It goes something like this:
- Run until tired.
- Walk while catching breath.
- Repeat until pooped out, or until an hour has passed.
It took me 14 weeks to progress from a mere 3 minutes (about a quarter of a mile) to a whopping 57 minutes (5.3 miles) yesterday, although as you can see, I hardly ran in March and April.
Because I am an engineer at heart, I had to celebrate this milestone by making a chart of dates and times that I so meticulously documented since the middle of February. The colored bars represent times where I was running nonstop. If you need any encouragement to start running regularly and the chart below is not enough, let me tell you that I also lost 3-5 pounds* in the process!
I used to look forward to the first day of school. In grad school, I've found myself wishing that I had another week of break. This is my schedule:
Remember how crazy last semester got? That was when I was just taking 12 credits. This semester, I have 12 credits of graduate-level courses and a 12-hr./week GSI appointment. I have been listening to songs like this to keep me sane:
I have also been drinking more tea instead of coffee; a portion of my evenings consists of me sipping cups of this and this.
I also hope to keep my stress level low by exercising regularly. Accordingly, over winter break I bought these sweet kicks:
I've never had real running shoes before, but after running in them I've discovered that they offer great stability and my back and shins don't ache as they did with my old shoes. NB 826, you have introduced me to a novel concept: running doesn't have to be painful. How glorious.
That's it for now. Oh wait. I'm also trying to keep track of where my money goes. If you don't mind giving your credit card and bank information to a third party, the folks at www.mint.com do quite a good job of categorizing and summarizing your expenses in graphical form. So you can actually quantify how much you spend on food, health, travel, etc. without meticulously saving all your receipts and entering spreadsheet hell. Thanks to Chris for the tip.
Here's to hoping I have a better semester than the last. Also, if you want to watch me graduate in May, contact me. The ceremony is May 24th at 9 am. I didn't participate in the graduation ceremonies when I finished my undergrad at The University of Iowa, but I have since decided it's something I should do, out of respect for myself and my family and friends. But this time, it's unfortunate that I'm in California and everyone I know who could possibly want to come is in Iowa!
