I ran.

Last night I headed over to THE TREADMILL. (I find if you say it in all caps, it's much more dramatic).

I was ready to do another 5 miles. Well, not really...but that was my goal. I came prepared. I had my iPod and my playlist, I had a plan. I have found that if I can see the screen, and see how far I have gone (and thus how far I still have to go)...I focus on that and sell myself short. SO, I covered the screen and I ran.

I ran for about 30 minutes before I looked at my progress. I had completed almost 3 miles! So I covered that bad boy back up and told myself I wouldn't look at the screen again for 20 minutes. And when I looked, I had ran almost 4.5 miles. So I covered it up one last time and ran for another 10 minutes. I finally uncovered it and ran until I saw 6 miles.

I ran 6 miles without stopping.

I am proud of myself.

Do you know what's funny? I had a hard time typing that sentence. It's difficult for me to say I am proud of myself. Is it for you? When is the last time you said that? I bet you deserve to say it. Interesting.

Anyways. This by no means makes me a runner. But here is what I have to say:

Our bodies are pretty amazing. I sell mine short a lot of the time. Just think of what it can do if we believed in it more often.

My knees hurt. Turns out running may not be my friend.

I burned 800 calories on THE TREADMILL. Combined with the 260 I burned at circuit, that's a total of 1060 calories out.

Gen asked what I do to get through the boredom. First, I have to have some good tunes. Also, it helps to have something on the tv that helps me gauge my time. For example, I like to watch the food network or HGTV bc the shows are 30 minutes long. So I say to myself, Self, you make to to commercial. Then, when the show comes back on I say, Self, you can make it to the next commercial, or the next show. I also chant things in my head. Like I may talk to myself about why I am running. Or I what my motivation is.

My goal for running is not to be a marathoner or sprinter. I really just want to be comfortable when someone says "Wanna go for a run?" I want to know that I can do it.

I am lucky because one of my coworkers in my office is a runner. Like for realz. He is in a runner group, he ran a 9 mile race a couple of weeks ago and ran a sub-6. Which means less than a 6 minutes mile. Out of 1800 runners, he came in 11th. So he has given me a few tips. For example, one question I asked was should I be aiming to run longer at a slower pace, or run faster at a quicker pace.

Answer: slower for longer. That is opposite of what I thought and what I was doing the first few times I ran.

I asked him what exactly I was working on conditioning. My heart? My lungs? My muscles?

Answer: I am really working on how my body manages the lactate acid that builds up. I don't understand this enough just yet to speak to it. But...thank God for google.

So there you have. A jumbalia of thoughts.

I also thought I would share with you my running playlist. It's kinda random. Would you expect anything less?