I can run.

I think it’s good to plan ahead for things when you’re trying to lose weight.  Holidays aren’t a huge trigger for me, but I do love me some baked goods.  So I might as well have some semblance of a plan, even if I don’t carry a one-sheet around with me everywhere.

My holiday plan?  Do what I’ve been doing.  I have a cheat day planned for my birthday, and that will be awesome…for one day.  Then it’s back on.  I’ve been taking it a little easy the last week because I was going a little off the deep end (1200-1400 calories per day, 60-100 minutes of working out every day without rest days) and I feel refreshed.  I’ve been shortening my workouts and took a couple of rest days, and I’ve been eating between 1700-2000 calories each day.  Today is the start of another push though, but I’m just reminding myself to keep it under control.  My goal is to make myself eat a minimum of 1500 calories each day and have at least one rest day per week.  Will my weight loss slow a little?  Maybe.  But I figure it’s worth it to make sure that I continue losing and avoid burnout.

In other news, I was at the Hot Buttered Run on Sunday.  The Hot Buttered Run was my first ever 5K last year, and this is me running for the camera, struggling to a 45:25, probably around 385 pounds at the time:

And here's me running at the finish of this year's Hot Buttered Run, just because:

Last year, I was at a 45:25, finishing 420^th out of 570 runners.  This year, I actually ran the entire thing.  I finished in 32:20, 306^th out of 873 runners.  The time is really immaterial, though.  I ran, without stopping, for five kilometers.  I’m not entirely certain, but I’m almost sure that I’ve never run farther than a mile in my entire life before Sunday morning.  I’ve heard that the leap to running for distance is really that, a leap.  I haven’t actually been running for the last few months at all.  I’ve been dealing with knee tendinitis, probably caused by dropping over 300 pounds on my knee for years.

Sunday wasn’t really supposed to be any different.  I know I’m in better shape than I’ve been in almost my entire life.  I’ve been walking, sure, but I’ve been walking for distance, or walking for speed, or when I’m at the gym, ramping up the incline.  But the plan was to jog for a bit, wait for my knee to hurt and my lungs to have enough, and then settle in to a quick walk until the end.  I was shooting for a sub-40 5K, basically.

So when the race started, I settled into a decently-paced jog.  I actually had a goal for this.  During my first Hot Buttered Run, I made myself jog for about the first half-mile, probably my competitive streak kicking in.  The goal was to run at least past that point, since come on, I can run that far.  So I’m jogging, and I hit that walking spot and I feel like I’m in good shape.  I’m feeling fairly comfortable, actually, and not much out of breath at all.

Around the three-quarter-mile point is a footbridge with a decent incline to get to it.  I also know that just past the footbridge is the one-mile marker.  I figure I’ll push my way up the bridge and the downhill should be plenty of time to get my breath back and at least make the mile.  Maybe I can beat my old time of 11:20 back in August.  I get to the one-mile mark and check my time: 10:43.  Sweet – I not only beat my old time, but I’m feeling pretty good still.  So I decide to push it a little further.  There’s an extended hill coming up that goes under the I-5 bridge and up to Esther Short Park.  At this point, I’m still not thinking that I can finish the race.  My thinking is that I want to make it up that hill.  I keep thinking that it’s going to get to be too much.  But I keep climbing the hill and while it’s more difficult than flat ground, by no means am I feeling like I can’t go. 

At this point, I start thinking to myself that maybe I can actually do this.  By the time I hit the two-mile mark, I figured I had to do it.  I mean, quitting at 2 ½ miles would just be awful, right?  So I finished.  I suppose the end of that story is a bit anticlimactic.  But while I was tired, and still sore today, I feel great.  Spinning tonight is going to SUUUUUUUCK, but I’ll be back at it this Saturday.  I have a run in Ridgefield Saturday morning and I intend to run the whole thing. 

I don’t think I’m to the point yet where I’m going to start shooting for any certain time, but I’ve got some goals in mind.  I want to run a 5K under 30 minutes.  I want to run a 10K.  And I want to run a mile faster than I could in high school.  My best time in high school was a 6:06.  I think I could probably do an 8:30 or so mile now. I don’t think I’m ever going to be running a sub-20 5K or anything, but here’s a horrible secret:  I actually kind of liked running.  In the last few months, I haven’t really been doing workouts that challenge me mentally. 

I’m hoping that this is the kind of thing I need to snap me out of the rut I’ve been in, since the rut has been almost entirely mental.  My workouts have been good, my eating has been good, but I just haven’t been feeling it lately.  My most rewarding workouts are the ones where I have to fight through when I really want to quit.  Running does that for me.  So maybe I will set a goal for this weekend.  I don’t know that sub-30 is something I can do yet, but I can beat 32:20.  I may not be a runner, but I can run.