Smack in the middle of week three... with ice on my knee.

I have never been good at the "training/practice" aspect of anything- if I can't pick something up fairly quickly, I give up (which is probably a big reason why I was never an athlete... well, that and my actual lack of athletic ability). 

On Monday, August 11, I started a running program (the ever-popular 'Couch to 5K').   A big part of me is ashamed to admit how difficult some of this has been for me.   In the past 2 weeks, there have been days that doing this run/walk interval training has been brutal, and my mind starts deciding there is NO way I can ever be a "runner."  Then, I push through and finish.  It isn't pretty, but each day I am finishing the assigned intervals and I continue to wake up and do it all over again.  Thanks to some encouragement from friends, including this quote from my running hero Marianne,  I am finding all of the sweat, soreness, breathlessness and struggle worth it.   

I am in the process of learning "not to push it." Rather than just do the suggested three-days-a-week, I've been working out 5 to 6 days a week.  Because of this, I've already had a very minor injury.  I wanted to get through this 9 week program in 7-8 weeks so that I would have a couple of extra weeks to make sure I was ready for this 5K in mid-October.  The thought of showing up to run a 5K and not succeeding is such a miserable one for me.   Couple my lack of will to practice with the fact that I have a hard time accepting that anything is out of my reach, and you can see why being put through a program is tough for me.  Despite this, the icebag on me knee is teaching me that I have to have patience, and that I have to build.  I have to train.  I have to work at it rather than rush to it.

It's a process, both mentally and physically.  But I'm proudly getting through it, one grueling run/walk session at a time.