Day 3 of My Not Really First Week

I decided that the hardest thing about running 5 miles is the time commitment. I knew that I had things to do this morning for work so I put off my run until the afternoon/early evening. I had hoped to get to run this afternoon before picking up Bodie from daycare but I got tied up with several things and that didn't happen. After getting home from work, I finally made it to the park to run.

As for the run...it was hot but not smoking hot so that helped. The 5 miles today were composed of one warm up mile, three miles, and a cool down mile. I'm not so good at "warm up" yet and tend to only warm up for about the first 1/4 mile. And...another thing I have to work on...I tend to want to pick up other people's paces if I get close to them or they start to pass me. I think it will help me in some ways but not just yet. I need to get used to my own pace first! During the run my left knee started hurting so bad once I got about 3/4 of a mile in. I just ran through it and it eventually subsided. Then, my left calf started getting really tense like I was getting a cramp in it. Owww! I read that when training like this you totally have to put mind over matter and I'm already seeing that. I wanted to stop running all together after I finished the first mile but I wouldn't let myself. And...it was very tempting to only do about a 1/4 mile for my cool down but I kept going!

I think I'm going to try to find those new shoes this weekend. I'm hoping that will help with my knee issue. I don't have to run again until Sunday so the next two days will be off days for running. I'm going to hit the gym tomorrow and then Saturday will be my rest day. And, I think I'm going to move my "legs day" at the gym to Friday so that I will have one day of rest between legs and running.I tend to have the pain in my knee the most when I'm running the day after doing legs. I guess I may just have to only do legs once a week for now!

To wrap things up...I started reading Nights In Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks. I've read it before but when I saw previews for the movie I had to read it again. Just a few pages into the book it talks about running and the father says to the son, "I just hope you're running toward something, not away from something." Now, when I see people running, I think that will always run through my head... Are they running toward something or away?