I Survived!

I lived through my first group run, but it was close :) I can now officially say I have run 4 miles. I was last, but I made it. Luckily I wasn’t by myself this time. Two others (plus a trainer) were with me, but they kept complaining about leg problems. I had no excuse except that it was hard. By the second half they shortened the intervals for us slow pokes, but by then I hated the start of each interval with a passion.

Part of the reason it was so hard is that this branch of the program is 3 or 4 times bigger than last year. So even though they split us into 4 teams, the teams have people with vastly different skill sets. In fact, our “slow team” has more people that the entire program had last year – and they split into 3 teams. Next week they are supposed to split our team into smaller groups so they can pace us better according to our skill set. Hopefully, this will make a huge difference in at least the way I feel during the second half. Yeah it will be 5 miles, but their goal is to not having us puking our guts out when we are done – and believe me it was a close call this time.

Even though it was hard, once the run was over I felt GREAT! I can’t wait until next week. Those running endorphins are absolutely wonderful. Wonderful!!!!! And with the run/walk intervals I felt very little pain afterwards. In fact, I barely felt anything until about noon today. Now I feel like I could use a hot bath or a good massage, but not to the point where I would avoid any activity (except maybe another long run). I think that if I didn’t work on the computer all day I really wouldn’t have notice much besides a slight soreness.

The only other side effect that I noticed is my general lack of hunger. Last night I had a small ice cream cone (150 calories) on my way home and a protein bar later, but I only ate because I knew I needed too. I avoiding eating too much before running so I had many calories to spare. Today I am doing terrible. No breakfast, a tiny lunch (ate my carb first and got really full), and no snacks. I finally went down and got myself some chili for dinner around 7pm, but I still wasn’t hungry. I just knew I needed some protein. For someone who normally eats 5-6 times a day (and stops losing under 1000 calories) this is not a good side effect. What a thing to complain about huh?

I will leave you with a few pictures that I just got of my 5K last month.