Day 3: Starting Couch25K

Okay, so today is D-day for me. Running is one of the few things in life that I love and hate simultaneously. My earliest memory of running is me panting heavily around the softball field at my elementary school, trying desperately to finish a mile in 11 minutes 10 seconds so I could pass the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in fifth grade. I was the very last person to cross the finish line. Good times.

After that, I didn't even attempt to run again until I was 28. Hubs and I signed up for a 5K together and I trained religiously. Of course, when I got there I still couldn't run the whole thing, but we completed it. I felt alternately great and awful during the race. Great when I first started. Awful when I realized I had only run a mile and I was already tired. Great when it was over. We did another 5K a couple of months later.

That fall, I joined Black Girls Run! - an incredible running club with groups all over the U.S. It's a community of black women and women of other races who support their commitment to health. I began running with them three times a week and started to actually like running. (On a few days, I genuinely loved it.) I signed up for a half marathon, finished it with several members of the group, and felt like a superhero.

But all that was over a year ago and I've only attempted to walk/run a handful of times since. This time, I'm starting out with Couch25K, a free, gentle introduction to running a consecutive 3.1 miles - something I was never able to do even when I ran regularly. You can get a look at the complete C25K nine-week schedule at CoolRunning.

Here's my prescribed workout for Day 1:

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Jog 60 seconds. Walk 90 seconds. Repeat jog and walk intervals for 20 minutes. 

I'll probably add a five-minute cooldown and stretch afterwards.

We actually have an ideal neighborhood for walking or running. The streets are fairly quiet and they're completely paved. The only problem is: We have a killer hill at the very beginning of our subdivision. I think I'll be staying away from that until I have a couple of weeks under my belt. I'll be back to post my Day 1 experience later on.