One more thing

I wanted to gloat about the fact that I ran yesterday for 8 minutes straight, no stopping. I did a two minute walk warm-up, then started jogging at 5.5 mph and told myself to go for broke. I wanted to quit at minute 3, but I pushed. I wanted to quit at minute 5, but then I saw how close I was to a half a mile. At the half mile, I pushed it just a little bit longer to 8 minutes. I was very happy and satisfied. I then walked for 15 minutes, then did another 5 minute jog. All said, I did 40 minutes on the TM yesterday.

Now, while I am gloating about running for 8 minutes, I wanted to point out that only two months ago 3 minutes was a huge burden, and back in April, when I started to try running, I would be in pain (hip pain) after only 1-2 minutes. Hence why I hadn't ever been running before. However, even though the progress has been slow, it has been progress. I don't call myself a runner, heck, I don't believe that running is the end-all-be-all that it's usually made out to be, but I do believe that I need to increase my endurance no matter what.

Now, the progress has been slow because the hip hasn't been perfect, but it's also because I don't feel as good after a 40-60 minute steady state workout as I do after a 20-30 minute HIIT session. Usually after a stint like that, I hurt, feel drained, and don't get much energy boost afterward. So I don't do the endurance stuff very often. However, I did mention before in other posts that I'm trying to increase endurance, and it is one of my goals this year to do the Tour deKota bike tour (5 days of non-stop cycling). And that training starts this month, so I can progress as slowly as I need to. I would also like to run a 5k this year. It's not as big a goal as the bike tour, but it's something I would like to do to prove something to myself. So I'll be biking and running a lot more this year than I ever have.