Well, in the beginning, I was younger, slimmer, arguably fitter and took the car! Now, older, fatter and NOT going to accept yet another raise in dress size, so here I am. I chose to start running slowly as I am an absolute couch potato, partly through laziness but also as I have fibromyalgia which makes any activity at times very difficult. As hard as things can sometimes be, I also have really good patches and my theory is if I get fit in those good times the bad might not be quite so bad. I have to be careful not to overdo things as this will almost certainly start a bad patch and recovery could take weeks.
So, my efforts started here. Week one was truly awful, w1r1 was spent stunned and embarrassed, that what I had seen as "pfft I can do that" was actually a bit hard, although my route made life a little more difficult as I chose one with a steep incline down and then basically a long uphill struggle. Lessons learned, hills are not my friend.
w1 r2 the underestimation passed, I chose a better route, a flat one! I did much better but still spent the majority of the time questioning my sanity.
W1r3 I managed ok, thought maybe I can do this but was nervous about stepping up to week 2, I considered repeating week one until it was easy but where's the challenge in that!
W2r1 I discovered the effects of camber, my left leg hurt but was quite proud to have managed to complete without dying!
W2r2 ran the other way around and no problems with camber, no left leg pain but still spending more than half my run thinking why am I even doing this!!
W2r3 sanity must have vanished at this point because I almost enjoyed myself!
W3r1 I was absolutely dreading this, the 3 min run, the weather was vile, my mood was too but quite frankly I was too stubborn not to go, surprised myself, as although I was tired at the end, I really did ok.
W3r2, disaster struck, set off after a fairly bad nights sleep thinking my run would wake me up, felt like I was back on my first run, spent half the run determined I must be an undiagnosed asthmatic (I'm not btw, just very lazy), I motored on but was struck with agonising calf pain in the middle of the 2nd 3 min run, I paused and limped a few steps while it passed and carried on albeit very slowly! Another lesson learned today, don't run when already tired.
W3r3 was today, I was really nervous after Fridays disaster but determined to keep breathing, keep myself paced and motor on. Set off a little later than normal ( I almost chickened out) but I did it! I'm still quite nervous about stepping up again to week 4 but I'll give it a go.