Seems I Needed a Schedule

I can't believe I haven't posted in two weeks. Not because I am so consistent in writing here, but because I usually write when I run and stop writing when I stop running. Which I’ve actually been doing consistently!

I have been running ever since I decided to go barefoot, just kind of leaving the house and running till I didn’t feel like it anymore. That was getting me a bit further than a mile, but not much.

I was still more in the reading about running mood than an actually running mood, so I picked up another book, this time Running for Mortals, co written by The Penguin himself. I loved his articles in Running World!

The book is greatly motivating (as expected) and it has the biggest variety of running plans you can imagine. For 5 and 10K it has a walk, a walk/run plan, a run/walk plan, a run plan, and a kick butt run plan. I decided to swallow my shouldn’t-be-existing-anyways pride and start with a walk/run plan. To make myself feel a bit better about it I’m doing the 10K plan instead of the 5K plan. I started on the 12th, and actually haven’t missed a day yet! That’s somewhat miraculous for me.

I squished and modified the first few weeks into two, and will be starting week 5 next Sunday. No further modifications though, I want to be sure not to overdo it and not to hurt myself. I keep reading that a relatively lot of people get stress fractures in their feet barefoot running and though I don’t know exactly what that is I DO know exactly that I don’t want to find out personally.

There are a few things that are making this work and helping me stay consistent when I usually wouldn’t.

• Running barefoot is new to me and just fun
• All but one night of my no-run nights I bicycle
• I’ve never ridden steadily so it’s double the fun and double the I’m actually getting better at something
• It’s written down on a paper calendar, so I get to cross each day off. I love to cross things off a list!
• The running days go back and forth between harder and easier days, so I’m not ALWAYS trying to do better than the day before, some days are just easy-breezy
• The plan calls for running 4 days a week starting this week, which I’ve never done before!

Long story short, I’m easy to amuse and always have been. But also, it’s nice to have a running plan to follow. I haven’t done that since starting running with the Couch to 5K program.

This is a (squished) 10 week plan, I’m hoping I can last the whole thing, and then move on to something a lot more running and a lot less walking. Every time I look at the plan my mind wants to start cutting out weeks, but I am going to try and follow it pretty close so I don’t end up hurting something.

Did I say I was going to keep that short?