Back on the Running Bandwagon

I've been a real slacker lately about my running. About 3 weeks ago, I decided I needed to go back to Couch to 5K and decided I'd pick up kind of where I left off, at the beginning of Week 5. Now that I have an iPod, I looked for podcasts for the program, and found one at http://www.djsteveboy.com/1day25k.html. I liked it because it actually had different ones for each day of weeks 5 & 6, which are different every day.

Last Thursday, I didn't want to go to running club, but Alec made me feel guilty so I did. It was over 100 degrees that day. I knew the distance I was aiming for was about 2 miles, so instead of going our whole course, which is a full 5K, I decided to just go to the one-mile point and then turn around and go back. I managed the first running interval (5 minutes) but after the 3-minute walk break, I was so hot that just couldn't bring myself to run anymore. So, I just kept walking.

I got back to our starting point around the same time as Alec and our new friend, M. My time was about 28 minutes. That's not bad for mostly walking.

As we always do, we were standing around chatting after the run and I started to feel a little nauseous, so I decided to sit down. I perched myself on the edge of a pickup tailgate. A few minutes later, I started to feel like I was going to pass out. I called for Alec and he came over and helped me lay down. Various people offered towels, cold water and Gatorade. I laid there for a while while Alec rubbed ice cubes over my arms & legs, put a cool cloth on my head and poured water into my mouth. I never actually passed out, but I sure felt bad. Finally, I felt better and we went off to dinner an everything was fine. I figure it was the heat.

The next day, we were helping M & H (H is actually Alec's new co-anchor) move in to their apartment (again, in the 100+ degree heat) and I started to feel sick again. I never actually got dizzy, just felt kind of weak, so I sat inside for a long while.

I had to go to the doctor yesterday anyway, so I talked to her about it and she said it's likely heatstroke and I just need to be extra careful about hydrating if I'm going to run outside.

But, I decided that instead of risking running, or even walking outside when it's this hot (which is for the foreseeable future) I will just go to the gym and run on the treadmill.

So, that's what I did last night, and the happy news of this post is that I did the Couch to 5K, Week 5, Day 1 successfully, if slowly. For 2 miles, I took exactly 31 minutes. At this point, my plan is to just work on getting my endurance up in the gym while it's hot outside and then once I can get back outside, hopefully I will be able to get my speed up. Most of the 1/2 marathon training programs I've looked at start with the assumption that one can run 3 miles, so my goal is to spend the next 5 weeks getting to that point so I can start the serious training in mid-September.

I still haven't picked out an official training program for the 1/2 marathon. I've looked at several, that go over various lengths of time. My friend R. said that she always makes sure that she has more weeks left before her race than the plan asks because there's always going to be that day, or that week, that you don't train for whatever reason and it's better to repeat a week or two than to get to your race week without having logged the appropriate number of long runs. I think this is good advice, especially since my training period covers Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's!