exercise regularly

I can’t seem to get this regular exercising thing into my system… The flu and holidays are external circumstances of course, but still. After the last post I tried week 4 once, then I went on my holidays. Unfortunately I came back with a huuuge blister under my foot, so although I really wanted to go jogging immediately, I wasn’t able to for a week. Today I finally could again, and I did another week 4. This is a real challenge, and I almost gave up during the last run, but I made it!

After my last post I got the flu, and then I somehow didn’t really get started again. After the flu I did a few more week 3 sessions, but things weren’t okay in other areas, which influenced my sleep, which influenced my exercise, etc etc… I did a week 3 session this morning though. I’ve got two small holidays coming up, but before I go I want to try one week 4 session, to see if I can do that yet. Just to know where to start from when I get back…

I started week 3 this morning and although both 3 minute runs were longer than I expected, I did well. I even felt like I could have done another repetition (I don’t know if I really could have managed that, but it’s great that I wasn’t completely exhausted at all!). Last night I felt almost giddy that I was going to start on week 3 the next morning :)

After the last post I had a bit of a rough week, and didn’t run anymore. But Friday and this morning I did another week 2 session. On Friday it was still pretty tough, but this morning (in the drizzling rain, I’m so cool…) I felt a definite improvement. I didn’t get any stings in my side, and only the last 2 runs felt heavier. (As compared to Friday: stings during the 3rd run, and getting out of breath at the 4th.) I hope that next session goes the same way or better, but if necessary I’ll just repeat week 2 a bit longer. There’s no rush…

This morning I did the first session of week 2 of C25K. I was a bit disappointed that I had more trouble completing it than I had expected. I though I had gotten quite a bit fitter over the last few months, but apparently not… But that’s okay, I guess, because I’m following a program that’s meant for people like me :)

I got an mp3 player for my birthday (woohoo!) and this morning I ran with a Couch-to-5K podcast for the first time. I enjoyed the music, and I especially loved the fact that I didn’t have to keep track of the time at all! I started over from week 1, although I think I can handle a bit more, but let’s just take it easy. Goal for now: Mo/We/Fri, and moving up every week.

I’ve done some more exercise lately. Several more early morning jogging sessions. No Couch-to-5K sessions though, because I found my recent experience with constantly looking at my phone very annoying. For my birthday I’m going to ask for an mp3-player, so hopefully my jogging sessions are going to get more frequent and more musical in the near future, and then I plan to also use the couch-to-5k podcasts and maybe work towards a real 5k somewhere…?

I tried one of the Couch-to-5K sessions this morning. I’ve done those before, but not since I got my new phone, because this one has no buzzer on the timer, which isn’t practical for this X-minute-walking/X-minute-jogging system. It also doesn’t do seconds, so I can’t set a 90 second timer. But those are all silly excuses, so I did one of the week-3 sessions this morning anyway.

It went okay, I actually did 3 repetitions of 2min/1min/3min/3min. But it was indeed unpractical that I had to keep looking at my phone during the jogging, I couldn’t focus on my breathing and things like that. (Of course the timer does have an alarm, but lately I’ve been running with music, and music and hearing the alarm don’t go together…)

In any case, I went jogging, so no matter how it went, that’s a good thing.

This morning, even before dawn, me and Bryan Adams went jogging. Well, I had to do all the jogging, he just kept on singing in my ear. :)
I found out that Vanishing has the exact right amount of “beats per minute” for the first track of my jogging route. Also, I really love jogging with music, plus the fact that I finally have a use for those old tapes. And last but not least, “It’s not even light yet” is no longer a valid excuse for not jogging, because it wasn’t that bad at all.

This evening I went to the gym with a friend who had two tickets for a free lesson. We went to BodyJam, which was a lot of fun. Hip hop style movements, very cool, and great music, I almost felt like a girl in an MTV video :) It took an hour, and we both felt very proud of ourselves afterwards. My friend is joining the gym now, and I’m thinking about it, but it’s a lot of money… Especially considering the fact that I could still get a card for the students gym if I wanted to, which is a lot cheaper.

But it was fun, felt good, and made me realise that doing some kind of exercise will probably do me a lot good, mentally as well as physically.