One, I am NOT an experience runner.
Two, I am NOT an experienced blogger.
Why I have decided to start doing both of these things at age 31 in the midst of my final quarter of graduate school is beyond me. I suppose I am doing it to prepare myself for the new life that is just around the corner. A life without classes...and possibly without work if I don't find something soon. Running and writing are two things I have always wanted to do, but never really have. I mean, I ran a 10k last summer for the first time, and I did it in 66 minutes. That, ladies and gentlemen, is as far as my running career has taken me thus far. However, I have signed up to do a half marathon in July. Yes, I have paid $55 to put myself through a potential amount of pain and agony. But I just want to see if I can do it. I want to test how strong I am. And I figure, why not write about it?
Today was my first day back to running since last August when I did the 10k. After that, school swallowed my life once again and prevented me from doing anything slightly unrelated to my major. Being that it was my first day back, I decided to try something new: running outside. When I was training for my 10k before, I did the whole thing on a treadmill with a 1.5 incline. As most people know, running outside is considerably harder that running on a treadmill, but I wanted to start out on the right foot, (no pun intended.) I chose a path that I knew had some inclines, but I thought, "why not? I might as well hit the ground running." (This time, the pun was intended.) Before I forget to mention it, I had also drank more coffee than water all day, so I'm sure my hydration points were low. Needless to say, it didn't go as well as I wanted. I made it half way through the run, but almost as soon as I turned back I hit another incline and had to walk. I ran/walked the rest of the way home, and I noticed that some of my muscles were beginning to tense up, particularly my left shoulder. I came home and tried to stretch, but I'm still sore.
My conclusion is that my body is going through shock. After months of no exercise and eating whatever I could grab in 30 seconds, it is not responding well to this new "let's get healthy" idea. This might be harder than I thought...
