Hello friends, it's been almost a year since I blogged on here and a lot has happened. Life-choices/goals wise it's been pretty great, I graduated from college, passed the NCLEX, got my nursing license, and got my first job as a real-life nurse. Exercise-wise, it's been not so great. I've been pretty sporadic, I went to the gym occasionally and tried to eat healthy, but with everything that was going on fitness sort of got shifted to the back seat.
But, since I don't believe in quitting and I really want to be able to run and enjoy it, I'm going to start over. This time around I'm going to have an actual plan instead of just doing whatever I feel like. My goal is to run a half marathon in a year from now. Sooner if I can but I'm not going to kill myself over it.
To start, I invested in good running shoes. Up till now I've never had good shoes and I end up just going for what's cheap and seems to fit. The problem is I have weird feet. They are wide and hard to fit, and my arches are super flat, which can cause all sorts of pains when I run without supportive shoes. The problem is I HATE supportive shoes. I don't like that bump in the middle that makes my foot arch like it's supposed to. After a lifetime of walking around with the inside of my foot flat on the ground, it feels weird to lift it up. Except if I don't have arch support this happens:
And that's not good.. Thus, instead of guessing what kind of shoes I needed I went to the Road Runner sports store with my friend where they measured my feet and took a video of me running to see what happens when I run. Then they made personalized recommendations based on my feet. Apparently I should be wearing a size 10.5 D stability shoe. Which obviously never occurred to me to try because I'm not entirely sure what that means. So they brought me some shoes to try out and I ended up with these:
But, since I don't believe in quitting and I really want to be able to run and enjoy it, I'm going to start over. This time around I'm going to have an actual plan instead of just doing whatever I feel like. My goal is to run a half marathon in a year from now. Sooner if I can but I'm not going to kill myself over it.
To start, I invested in good running shoes. Up till now I've never had good shoes and I end up just going for what's cheap and seems to fit. The problem is I have weird feet. They are wide and hard to fit, and my arches are super flat, which can cause all sorts of pains when I run without supportive shoes. The problem is I HATE supportive shoes. I don't like that bump in the middle that makes my foot arch like it's supposed to. After a lifetime of walking around with the inside of my foot flat on the ground, it feels weird to lift it up. Except if I don't have arch support this happens:
And that's not good.. Thus, instead of guessing what kind of shoes I needed I went to the Road Runner sports store with my friend where they measured my feet and took a video of me running to see what happens when I run. Then they made personalized recommendations based on my feet. Apparently I should be wearing a size 10.5 D stability shoe. Which obviously never occurred to me to try because I'm not entirely sure what that means. So they brought me some shoes to try out and I ended up with these:
Brooks Aderenaline GTS 14.
They fit just right, and they are pretty dang comfy. The only problem is they have arch support so I don't particularly like how they feel but since that's what I needed it works for me. I haven't gone on a real run with them, I just jogged around with them after I bought them, but so far they seem to be working out pretty great. I'll probably talk more about them once I've run a few miles in them.
So after I got shoes I needed a plan. I decided to do what my sister is doing and start with a couch-to-5K plan. Once I can comfortably run three miles (which according to the plan will take about 10 weeks), then I will find a good half-marathon training program and have at it.
I decided to do this because historically when I start running I push myself too hard too fast and end up getting really sore, taking a break for a few days, and then those few days turn into months. So this time I'm going to pace myself and start at the beginning and work my way up gradually. To start I mostly just want to get in the habit of running at least 3 days a week.
The plan I will be following can be found here. It starts with three short runs per week and builds up to four longer ones by the end. It seems pretty doable :)
So that's the plan, hopefully a year from now I will be running circles around my current self!
