The Dreaded Mile.

So I am doing the Couch to 5k plan with my daughter. I did this before alone but I never totally finished it the program.

We just finished week 5 this morning. :)

When we started the program, I think it was about 90 on day one, with about 80% humidity. We also ran in a field that is across the street from my house instead of on the road. Today was only 60 and there was a nice cool breeze. It was absolutely incredible.

Now, I live 5 miles from anything. I mean if you Google map me there is nothing around except for farms. I love it out here, but the roads are narrow country roads and some of the cars tend to not pay attention. My thought was run the field, but it's a training ring for horses so the ground is really rutted from them.

We have been going out to a track as well that is near us ( nothing is near us but it's as near as you can get ). I like running a track sometimes, but it can get boring. The roads however, well they are awesome, but really hilly. But to be honest I think when I am at the track I miss the hills more than anything. To give you and idea of how cool it is to run here, the other night I was running out the road alone ( my daughter had a prior commitment ) and while I was running I looked over and there were deer running in the field next to me. I was really peaceful to see that.

But that isn't what this post is about. This post is about the MILE. I have read that once you run a mile it's easier. There is a barrier that you break through, perhaps more mental than physical, but it's there. I run slow, I am getting faster, but I am running slow so no more shin splints.. no more injuries at all. I just want to run, time is nothing to me right now. But I run like a turtle, but I am running!!!

So today, we had to run for 20 minutes straight. Normally, I would go to the track the first time for this distance, but today, I just didn't want to. I don't know why, I wanted the hills. So we started from our front door up the hill with our 5 min warm up walk and then when we hit the flat part of our route we were still walking. The program never told me to run.. I looked and when I locked the phone I also paused the program. We walked most of the flat part where we could have been running. :/ So we resumed it and kept moving forward, (the route we chose to do today was a little over 3 miles we figured we could walk the end of it so we didn't' have to do an out and back ) we started running on the longest hill, it's not that steep, just very long. Now we have run this before, but not with 20 mins of running, usually 5 minutes then we walk. We ran up it and kept going... out and out. My calves were telling me, HEY DUMMY we could have done the track today. But I didn't, I chose the hills.

The top of that hill is a little downgrade, my daughter was cheering the downhill and I was snickering cause I knew what was next.. A huge fairly steep hill, (she didn't know it was coming :) ). We didn't give up, mostly i didn't give up, she made it look easy, and in the end we did the 20 mins with NO stopping NO walking and although it was slow 14min/per mile. We did it!!

The mile has been conquered again... the barrier has been shattered!!! It's so good to be running again :) Bring on the Marathon!!! ok yeah 5k :)