Yesterday I experienced success, and disappointment.

Yesterday afternoon, I looked at a set of goals I made a few weeks ago when I started running again. Here they are:

Running Goals:
By April 30th: Run 1.5 miles at 5.5 mph easily
By May 31: Run 2 miles easily
By June 8: Run 2.5 miles
By June 22: Run 3 miles

June 22 is my birthday, and I want to see what it feels like to run 3 miles before then. I’ve only ever run 3 miles once in my life.

So, after seeing that yesterday, and knowing that I was going to the gym last night, I decided that I’d better try to run 1.5 miles. I hadn’t tried it before yesterday for probably… 2 or 3 years. But, I did it! At 5.5 mph (around an 11-minute mile), I ran 1.5 miles, without batting an eyelash, really. Then, I cranked up the speed a little and exhausted myself before doing my cool-down.

I’d been reading, too, about the knee pain I’ve been having when I run. Turns out it’s my IT band (a band that runs along the outside of the leg), which is rubbing against my knee joint, causing pain. There were three recommendations for helping this pain – stretch, shorten your stride, and buy better shoes. My shoes are awful, so I’m going to have to remedy that soon, but I couldn’t do it right away. But I could shorten my stride and do the stretches needed, so I did those two things, and – miraculously – no knee pain! Nice.

After my excellent achievement, I continued my workout with some squats, stretches, and a few tricep extensions. The great news here is that now I know I can run 1.5 miles, so I can start working my way toward 2 miles.

And for the bad news… I got on the scale before I left. 152 pounds. Yikes. I’m pretty sure that’s the heaviest I’ve ever been. My ideal weight is 138-ish, so I’ve got some serious work to do. So far, though, I’m doing pretty well with my resolutions that I began this week. The last few nights dinners have been light, snacks have been few and far between, water consumption has been up, and I’ve been feeling pretty good. If I can get myself up tomorrow morning to go to the gym, I’ll be doing really good for this week. 5 workouts in a week is awesome. If I do that, I think I’ll give myself Sunday off for some rest.