New milestones. (Pun intended)

I got up this morning and looked outside and said, today is a good day for a run. The temp was in the low to mid 70s, there was a slight sea breeze coming in, it was perfect. My father does a two mile walk up and down his street every morning, so I decided to take his route since it's right about the same length that J and I have been walking in the park. I looked at mapmyrun to find a landmark to run to that was just farther than 0.4 miles, which is what I ran consecutively the last time I went with J on Tuesday. To my surprise, walking a quarter of a mile and then running all the way to the end of my parents' street along the water was 0.55 miles. I wasn't sure that I would be able to run that far, since tacking on 0.15 miles is a little bit much (seriously, I do know how pathetic that sounds) but I also figured that so much of running is mind over matter that I decided to give it a try.

I started out at a brisk walk for my quarter mile warm up. J and I both agree that the warm up and cool down is the most important part of our exercise regimen... they say that the best way to exercise your calves when they are sore from running is to walk, and walking after the run really prevents me from being in pain. It also prevents me from having a blackout like I did the very first time I tried to run.

In any case, I did my brisk walk, and then started off. I ran for a while and passed an older gentleman who was walking down the street on crutches (THAT is dedication!). He wished me good morning, and complimented me on my running style, which made me smile. I went on my merry way and did have one slightly demoralizing fakeout moment... I thought I saw the end of the street and got all excited, but it really was just a curve and the end was a little ways ahead. But! I made it! I ran the whole way and then a little further. That's what happens to me usually: when my goal is in sight, I don't just throw the rest of my energy into making the goal, my body says "Aha! We made it but we're not exhausted yet! Let's just go a liiiittle bit farther, aren't you proud of yourself?!" So! Today I ran 0.6 miles without stopping! I can now safely say that that is definitely the farthest I have ever run without stopping in my life. A little embarrassing, but I am proud of myself.

After the initial run, I did an interval of walking around a neighborhood loop. Once I finished the loop, I saw the man on crutches again and he asked me what kind of shoes I was wearing. When he saw them up close, he recognized them as being Vibrams, and he said that he didn't like Born To Run very much but he knew about the idea behind it. The funny thing is, he completely didn't believe me when I told him that I never ran before a month ago. He asked me three times how much I ran before I started with the barefoot shoes, and then he complimented me again on how light I am on my feet when I'm running. This made me very proud, because the whole point is to be light on your feet and not have a driving impact when you land, so it was cool to have a stranger point that out. Yay!

When I got back on to my parents' street, I decided to see how far I could run. Unfortunately the 0.6 mile run took a lot out of me and I didn't get very far... About 0.3 miles. I did walk again and then do a final stretch of 0.1 miles, but by then I was quite tired. It definitely is still my cardio that is holding me back, because even though my calves were in fact a little bit sore by the end, I was gasping for breath. The sports bra under the built-in shelf bra in the shirt I was wearing also didn't help... I don't think the sports bra is too tight on its own, but with this shirt, it was definitely compressing my rib cage too much. Hopefully it will be fine because I don't feel like hunting for new sports bras.

I did my cool down walk and got scolded by my father about how running is bad for your knees. This aggravates me because the man is a mechanical engineer. He swears by his chiropractor because it makes "engineering sense" to him to get his spine re-aligned, but he refuses to listen to how the mechanics of the foot make sense. I'll just have to send him the barefoot running Harvard professor's website and see what his says then. In the meantime, I am going to stretch my feet and my calves out and be quite content with how things are going for me.

I also am thinking about switching up my running plans and going to something more regimented like the Couch to 5K running plan... I don't know if running farther in the initial stretch every time I run is a good idea for improvement, or if I should be doing intervals that don't push me as hard individually but all together improve my cardio. We will see. I think I'll be ready soon to start running more frequently during the week because I'm a little frustrated at the fact that I pretty much max out after an mile of running total. I would have been hard pressed to go any farther today than I already did, and I want to be able to go farther! We'll see, research it is. Once J gets over whatever awful virus he has and we run together again, I want to do more video work so I can see if my stride has changed or improved.