Week 2 Day 2 - Bipolar Wednesday

No, I'm not talking about the disorder.

Today has been interesting. That I can say with confidence.

It was Ugly Tie Day at work. A colleague of mine who carpools with me was gracious enough to lend me one of the most hideous ties ever. Without the excitement of seeing laughing at everyone's ugly tie, today would have likely been unbearable. The rather simple, yet lengthy task I've been working on for the past two weeks gets more complex and lengthy each day.

I continually yawned throughout the day. For the first time, I didn't feel like running mentally, but did physically. I just wanted to get home and go to sleep. No can do.

I got home, changed, and made my way to the gym. People were out playing basketball, soccer, walking their dogs, and swimming. Things were normal.

I enter the gym and see a girl running on the middle treadmill. The far right one has a sign on it informing runners-to-be of its inoperable condition. I head towards the left treadmill and sink as I see the telltale signs of it being inoperable as well. There is no little LED heart pulsing as there would be if it were working.

The girl running in the middle looks at me and somehow conveys that she's nearly finished with no words or awkward hand signals. I acknowledge, using this same newfound method of conversation, and head over to the stationary bike to warm my legs up. Within 4 minutes, she's done and I hop on.

I set the warmup walking speed to the same thing I've used for the past 2-3 runs. In the first thirty seconds, I realize that I'm walking awkwardly slow. I bump the speed up to what I started the program with nearly two weeks ago. I feel my inquisitiveness churning. Run one comes and I set the speed to my run speed from two weeks ago also. Thirty seconds passes and my questions were answered. The far left treadmill is not calibrated properly at all.

I realized that the past couple of runs I've done on the far left treadmill were a lot harder at lower speeds. Having run faster, with less effort, on the middle and right treadmills, I came to the conclusion that the left one has to be 0.5 - 1.0 mph faster than the other two. There is no way that it was this much easier for me to run tonight without that being the case. When you are just beginning to run for the first time in your life, really, 1 mph is a big difference.

Now I don't feel so bad for slowing my speeds on the left treadmill and still having trouble. This was a little confidence boost that got me through the first few runs tonight...well almost.

I then noticed that my C25k app stopped playing my music each time it transitioned between walking and running. I had to restart it each time. Having worked with computers and software all my life and now in the workplace as a profession, I did the first thing all computer-literate people do - I rebooted the app.

While this did fix my problem, now my workout had begun from the beginning again. I fast forward to Walk 2, where I was when I began troubleshooting, and set my phone down. My hand gets caught up in my headphones and jerks my phone off the treadmill and I try to catch it with the headphone cable. The weight of the phone was too much and my phone faceplanted on the treadmill and slung backwards as the treadmill went around. I sighed and stopped the treadmill. I nearly fell off as I attempted to step down to grab my phone.

To my relief, it was fine. That's the first time I remember dropping my phone in years. I don't do that. I plug back up, start the program AGAIN and continue walking. Now the volume was significantly lower. I check the slide on my headphone cable and it hadn't moved. I raised the volume on the phone itself and I was back to the workout. Ugh.

I continued running and walking at my original paces. As a whole, I was breathing better. My legs were still hurting though. After my very first run, I tightened my shoes for the next few runs. This is when my legs started hurting. Logically, I thought that correlation might be relevant. Before tonight's run, I loosened them. I think I went a little too loose. I'll try to find the happy medium for tomorrow.

I considered other reasons that my legs were hurting. I think the treadmill is mostly to blame. It requires me to run abnormally. I noticed that I was kind of shuffling. Instead of pushing off with my legs I was pulling them forward. That obviously explains my shin pain. By the time I realized this, it was already too late. I'll try to change that for tomorrow. I'm not sure when I'll transition my runs outdoors, but when that happens, I'd like to compare strides.

Regardless of the ups and downs of the day, I'd say it was largely a success. There goes another run that old me would have never done.

I'd like to end this particular post with a quote. A coworker of mine posted it as his Facebook status this morning and it spoke to me. Regardless of the gimmicks the author may try to pull, or whatever you think about him, these words have meaning. It reminds me of myself two weeks ago. This is essentially the realization I came to, myself, when I decided to take action. It can apply to many different aspects of your life. No matter what you may be dealing with yourself, take these words to heart:

"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.” -Mark Victor Hansen